Evolution
by Ha-Hee Prime
Summary: It's here, folks: The first "real" Sequel to "Transformation." Fleshing out the end of the story: Cybertron is dead, the Matrix is disintegrated; and Prime, Megatron, and Elita are somehow supposed to keep their heads in all this mess. Jetfire and the 'Structies head teams down to explore their dead home. What they find there will change every transformer forever.
1. Stage 1: Creatures of Mud

**-Evolution-**

_**Prologue**_

0o0o0

_Jetfire watched. Not in fear or wonder or humility, or even in embarrassment. The gods he never had believed in were locked in a death-struggle before his wide-open optics. But if anyone had asked him to define what he was feeling as he gaped out at the sight, he would have answered, "Nothing."_

_He watched, face blank, as a gossamer trail of his own spark-light streamed from his open torso; watched it weave itself among the many thousand other strands running into the heart of the Matrix. He gasped and stumbled back a little as he felt his soul tie into the great Soul of his Creator. He was confused and uninformed and overwhelmed. But he followed his Commander. Along with every transformer of Cybertron, he sent what strength he had into the heart-stone of his god._

_Several small ships of the raggle-taggle fleet stood between Jetfire's own shuttle and the Leaders' cruiser. But he imagined he could just make out Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Elita-One standing out there on its hull, their arms upraised to lift an object grown so brilliant that it left an after-image burned into his optics. He blinked, and turned away; and thus Jetfire was one of the few who was not blinded when the Matrix of Leadership disintegrated in a white-hot flash in Optimus's hands. The once-agnostic scientist remained to bear witness to the death of the gods._

* * *

**Stage 1: Creatures of Mud**

_What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine_

_The fleet limbs of the antelope?_

_What but fear winged the birds, and hunger_

_Jeweled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?_

_Robinson Jeffers_

_0o0o0_

Elita watched; but not out through too-small, fog-rimmed windows to the lifeless lump which she had once called home. Her gaze was turned inward. She was watching Orion.

Not many bots remained who'd known the Autobot Commander before he'd been refitted as the Prime. Not many could recall the quick, shy smile; the awkward, easy optimism of Orion Pax. But Elita had been there.

Sure, she'd been a different femme then. (Hadn't they all been different, in those far distant, simpler times?) But her bond with Optimus was still the same. Alone, they were still Ariel and Orion, two unassuming bots who were content to laugh and cry together, transform together, rust together, go offline together.

Once chosen as the Prime, Orion had become the soldier, leader, hero they'd all needed him to be. He'd borne the Matrix of Leadership worthily; and what more could any mech hope to achieve? But the Matrix had imploded in his hands, in that dark hour of supreme sacrifice. It had left him alone, bereft, with a hollow in his body and his mind which nothing and no one could fill. His god was dead; his oracle destroyed, and he was left a lone and lowly mech, to lead a race of refugees into an unforetold future.

He held himself as tall and strong as always; but sometimes Elita caught the signs. A brief hunch of the shoulders there; the quick scratch of a thumb-knuckle against an empty chest; a too-tight hold upon a bannister... Elita saw.

And so when he would steal off to recharge for a few hours, she'd follow him into the dark. There, away from the optics of the thousands of mechs who looked to them to lead, young Ariel would hold her mate Orion against the loss of what he'd been.

* * *

From a dimly-lit corner of the cramped commissary, Dead End watched as 'Bots and 'Cons scrabbled for scraps saved from the Cataclysm. Supplies were short. Tempers were shorter. The dark-red and black Decepticon stunt-car hunched protectively around his energon cube, hoping to hide its warm pink glow and escape notice. No one had been told just how long the fuel supply would last; but Dead End was surprised it had held out even this long.

And when the last tank ran dry, what then? Really, he could not bring himself to care. After all, his kind had always been destined for doom. The most important thing to Dead End at this moment was that Motormaster had not found and bullied him today. Most likely he would turn up soon; but not yet. Not yet.

He sipped his drink in sullen silence. Through a small, dark window he could just make out the Command ship, where Megatron and Prime and all the others were still pretending that everything was hunky-dory. He zoomed in his focus till he could re-read the name so carefully stenciled in tall red letters on its side. "The _Guardian_?" he gave a little mordant laugh. "More like the '_Ark 13_.' We _asked _for our bad luck."

It was bad luck indeed that Sideswipe, the eternal troublemaker, overheard the Stunticon's gloomy pronouncement. In less than a quartex, the lead ship's given name was all but forgotten, and its new moniker was being whispered by the mechs and femmes throughout the fleet. Dark humor was a last defense against insanity.

* * *

"_Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended._

_And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos,_

_which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error_

_to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone."_

_Terry Pratchett_

_0o0o0_

The ad-hoc war room was located deep in the lead ship's belly, down along the keel – an ovoid chamber tapering to pointed alcoves at both ends, paneled in roughened metal slats to muffle any sound within. From its head, their shadowed bodies blending with the plating upon the walls, Optimus Prime and Megatron watched their Lieutenants and Sub-Commanders. The two tall warriors had spoken no word for the whole briefing, but had left Shockwave (Megatron's Second-in-Command after the deaths of Soundwave and Starscream) to preside instead. Their red and blue optics flickered from bot to bot, noting the little signs and tells that signaled thoughts held back, unvoiced.

"More than enough time has elapsed for the planet to cool," Shockwave repeated, his voice cold and deliberate as always. "All scans indicate that its surface is compatible with Cybertronian life." He rested his one functional hand on the edge of the long, black table which projected a 3-D holo-map of the planet, leaned in, and jabbed his gun-arm down through the image into the blinking red question-marks clustered beneath the known surface. "The underlying structure is what should concern us now. What is it made of? Is it stable?"

_"Will it blend?_" hissed Blitzwing from behind his hand to Astrotrain. The tank-jet-mech had never been adept at social niceties. Astrotrain snickered.

Shockwave shot a glare at the two Decepticon triple-changers. He had never fully supported their promotion; and they were demonstrating now his reasons for not doing so. "I suggest sending a team down," he said firmly, obviously hoping to quell the comments from the peanut gallery. "Six or eight bots, no more. Let them find out what we are dealing with. Then we'll know enough to make the final decision: Stay here, or find a new planet to colonize."

"We should've ditched this mess as soon as Primus started to transform," Astrotrain grumbled in a whispered aside to Blitzwing. "There's nothing left. Waste of our few resources sticking around here, and for no good reason I can see." He grimaced when a few bots turned to hear him better. Astrotrain was uncomfortable in his new authority – it gave him power, yes, but it also meant his slip-ups never went unnoticed. Worse, he was expected to behave. "Primus is dead," he said, raising his voice defiantly. "And so is the Matrix. Hoping for some miraculous 'resurrection'-" (he crooked his fingers into air quotes) "-Is pointless."

There was a murmur of assent. But then Jetfire spoke up firmly. "We owe it to Cybertron – to Primus – not to give up on our home just yet." The tall white scientist shot a glance toward Megatron and Prime, both of whom he'd called 'Commander' during his long history. But they made no sign of either favor or disapproval.

"I'll head up an expedition," he told Shockwave, but unenthusiastically. "I've seen more than my share of dead worlds."

The one-eyed purple bot nodded agreement. "Good. I'll oversee your mission; see if there's any correlation between what you find on the planet, and the data in what's left of the Archives."

A collective wince ran through the gathered bots. The reminder of how close they still were to extinction touched a nerve.

"You and your team will be the sensors," the Decepticon's head-scientist told Jetfire, "I will be the brain."

The taller, better-armored Autobot gave Shockwave a cold look. But then he shook himself, and shrugged. "Right then. Anyone else?"

"I'll offer to accompany you, of course," Perceptor said. He was the Autobots' lead scientist, so his participation was practically a given. "And I suggest we include Beachcomber as well. No other bot has made so thorough a study of geology as he has. It's true that Cybertron – or what was Cybertron – is made of metal, not of rock. But I believe Beachcomber would have valuable insights into its mineral composition, and how we might adapt to it."

The red-and-turquoise mech paused, before adding with some care, "I also assume we will enlist Wheeljack's assistance. But may I suggest that he do his part in his own lab here, not on the planet itself. His understanding of chemistry and its material application is well-known, but..."

"-So is his penchant for blowing stuff up. Yeah, we get ya, Perce," Jazz put in with a smile. The quick black-and-white mech's almost irreverent disregard for all things heavy and depressing was why Prime had kept him as a Lieutenant for so many thousand vorns.

"That's three – myself plus two," Jetfire said. "Any other proposals?"

"Reflector has the best imaging hardware," Prowl offered, to the surprise of many. The strange little camera-bot (or was it bots?) was often overlooked. "I think you'll need him. And Cosmos could make a detailed survey of the planet's surface from low orbit." Prowl, Optimus's Second-in-Command, could always be relied on to see through the clutter on the surface of a given situation, and point out the most effective solution.

"Yeah, the little green guy might like to be part of a real team, for once," Jazz agreed. "But speakin' of green, it seems t' me you're bein' awfully quiet over there, Scrapper." He jerked his chin at the reticent leader of the Constructicon combiners. "Ain't this right up your alley?"

The black and lime-green builder replied with a pained expression. "If you want green, take Hound. I'll work with my own team, not yours." He turned, and spoke to the still-closemouthed Megatron. "We'll drill down to the planet's core, and send reports back to you of what we find there." He waited for some confirmation. Receiving none from his leader, he huffed to the mech of the moment, "Will that suit you, Shockwave?"

"Admirably."

"Two teams now?" Jetfire pursed his lips. But then again, it would probably still be some time yet before there could be any easy integration between Autobots and Decepticons. He was forgetting for the moment that Reflector would be the only Decepticon included in his proposed team; but the little bot had always been so easy to forget. "If that is all," Jetfire said, glancing again at the two silent Commanders, "I'll take my leave to begin preparations."

"One moment." Sixshot was soft-spoken as ever – his words, his demeanor, even his gentle white, lilac, and sea-green coloring always at odds with his power and purpose. The whole room fell silent at the first sound of his voice.

The Decepticons' living weapon nodded solemnly to the white Autobot scientist. Then he stepped forward, causing some much-shorter mechs from his faction to flinch away and look sullen. "I'd like to come along, if you'll have me," he said.

"Why?" Jetfire couldn't help but ask.

The lethal, all-intimidating soldier shrugged. "I'd be a good defense, if nothing else."

Jetfire looked him up and down (the huge 'Con was one of the few who could stand shoulder-to shoulder with him). Unspoken between the two tall mechs were memories of the many times Jetfire had come to some poor, blasted planet in a vain search for surviving life after Sixshot had finished with it. The Decepticon Phase-Sixer did his job too well.

"All right," the Autobot replied at last. He turned on his heel and stalked out through the exit.

* * *

"_All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct._**"**

– _George Bernard Shaw_

o0o0o

Megatron watched his bond-brother thoughtfully. The red mech was sitting hunched in one of the mismatched chairs left in the now-cleared War Room. He was staring down at his empty hands. "Still so silent, Optimus?" Megatron quirked his mouth to one side. "For a mech renowned for mighty words, you've been over-quiet of late."

"And for a gladiator-warlord, you're sounding remarkably silver-tongued. I compliment your flowery phrasing." Optimus quirked a crooked smile.

"One of us has to talk." Megatron snorted. "Lately I'm left to speak for both of us."

Optimus met his gaze, the light of humor fading from his blue optics. "I know it, Brother." He rose and stretched. "Be patient with me just a little longer. I'll find my way soon enough."

"You mean you'll figure out how to lead without your precious Divine Dispensation?" Megatron demanded.

Optimus flinched. He rubbed a fist against his empty chest, but said nothing.

"You'd better," Megatron continued ruthlessly. "We need you, Optimus. You are, much as it pains me to say it, the one indispensable mech in all of this."

Prime stood silent, and watched his bond-brother walk stiffly out the door. "I hope not," he muttered to himself.

* * *

_And if everybody says that you are wrong, then you are one step ahead._

_But there is one situation which is better still, when everyone begins to laugh about you,_

_then you know you are two steps ahead._

_-Albert Szent-Gyorgi_

o0o0o

Elita made her way up the rickety, ill-lit ladder that let to the ship's small top hatch. She braced against the rounded sides of the vertical well, and turned the heavy wheel that unlocked the trapdoor. She heaved against it till it fell open with an airless, muffled clang. Not for the first time she wondered who had designed so poor an exitway. The larger bots would find it a tight squeeze.

But Megatron had made it out through here. He sat upon the ship's great hull, his arms wrapped tightly round his knees, staring out from his precarious perch at the dead world hanging in the star-specked black before them. In public view, he hid all his unease. But out here in the emptiness of space, he showed his fear.

He sensed the femme's arrival, but did not turn.

_He sent you_? he commed across the silence.

_No. Not this time._

Elita magnetized her feet for safety, and made her way across the ship's smooth hull to sit down beside the big Decepticon. She waved a hand out at the dead gray planet. _Having some second thoughts about all this?_

_Some?_ Megatron stared morosely out at the corpse of Cybertron_. I had plans for this place, Elita. 'Peace through tyranny,' and all that._ His gaze grew wistful. _I was going to slagging rule the universe from that planet..._

He turned to Elita. _Can you imagine what it could have been like... firing up those old core-engines and traveling from galaxy to galaxy...?_

_I can._ The Femme Commander interrupted the big mech with a restraining hand upon his arm._ I have imagined many things. I spent more of my lifetime there than either you or Optimus did, after all._ Like Megatron, she hugged her knees, and propped her chin upon them._ Cybertron was my home,_ she finished simply.

For a while the two exiled bots stared out into immeasurable blackness, each playing on its black canvas the vid-files of lost places and lost dreams.

Megatron snorted suddenly, breaking up the companionable silence._ I followed him, you know. I almost always do. He's just so damn persuasive. And like every-slagging-one else, I couldn't bring myself to disappoint him..._ He shook his head._But now he sure as slag is disappointing me._ He turned to Elita._ What are we going to do if our Prime keeps glitching up like he is?_


	2. Stage 2: Creatures of Clay

**Stage 2: Creatures of Clay**

_After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? That's how I answer when I am asked – as I am surprisingly often – why I bother to get up in the mornings._

_– Richard Dawkins_

0o0o0

"Stand by for landing," Hound called out. "And hold onto your afterburners; this'll get real bumpy if the crust's not strong enough to hold us."

There came a thump and lurch, a topsy-turvy moment as landing gear met uneven terrain, a_ hiss-click_as the hydraulics took up weight. The little shuttle leveled itself on spindly legs; then with an almost-sentient sigh, shut down.

Not a bot moved or spoke for several kliks.

Then, "Move out," Jetfire ordered. "Let's see what we've come to see."

The little band disembarked with reluctance. One or two bots looked back at the squat yellow _Pilgrim _that had brought them here, as if to seek some reassurance. But the drop-ship's presence brought no comfort. The homely little craft only accentuated just how alien their homeworld had become.

Beachcomber turned in a slow circle, and gave out a long and cheerless whistle.

This was not Cybertron. This was not home. This was a strange, fire-blasted world which seemed somehow diseased. Between the mottled floes of dull quicksilver, its surface was roughened here and there with greeny-black patches of rubble. Off to one side of the stunned mechs, several fungal outcrops lurked like shameful mutant lifeforms begging their creators for a mercy killing.

There came a soft, watery sigh from Cosmos, a rotund green and yellow minibot. Hound put an arm across his fellow-Autobot's shoulders. "It's all right, Cos'," the four-wheeled scout assured him. "We all feel just the same."

Jetfire tried to pull himself together. He was practiced at keeping a clinical distance, inuring himself to the spark-dulling horror of performing an autopsy on an entire world and all its life. He'd done it all too many times. But he'd never yet had to perform this service for his home. He felt an unreasonable upwelling of resentment for Sixshot, their tag-along weapon of mass destruction. But this desolation was not that infamous mech's fault.

"Cosmos, you're up," he said tersely. "The quicker we get those radar maps of the surface, the better." Then remembering the diminutive bot's sensitive soul, the Autobot team-captain smiled down at the stumpy shuttle-bot, who barely came up to his knee. "Report in any time you see something interesting," he suggested kindly. "Even if you just get bored."

"Yes, Jetfire," Cosmos quavered. With a few mournful clunks he folded down into his short-range shuttle mode, and blasted up into the soot-black sky.

Jetfire turned back to the paltry contingent huddled around him. "We've all got work to do," he said briskly. "Let's do it." He began pointing bots in various directions. "Reflector, transmit photos of everything we see up to Shockwave. Perceptor and Beachcomber: samples, starting here. Find out if the crust shows any reaction to the heat of our shuttle's landing thrusters. Hound, scout the perimeter and transmit your findings. Stay sharp. Sixshot..." He paused, uncertain.

"Guard duty?" the tall, quiet mech suggested.

Jetfire shrugged in mild annoyance. "Fine. But I'm sure there's nothing living here but us fools."  
******  
**

* * *

_And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet,_

_for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground._

_-Exodus 3:5_

0o0o0

Longhaul was grumbling. As usual. "Why is it always us who have to do the dirty work?" he complained as he trundled a truck-load of rubble over to the growing pile beside their camp.

"Huh. Yer joking, right?" Bonecrusher bulldozed down some crusted, bulbous outcrops with relish. "Or haven't you noticed your alt-mode, Dump-Truck?"

"Shut up!" Hook ordered sharply. His crane-arm was fully extended; his balance questionable. But unless the six Constructicons wanted to merge and let the gestalt Devastator play at tinker-toys with this equipment, he was the only one able to raise the drill-rig apparatus high enough. "Both of you quit yer yapping and help me-"

"Oh yeah?" Mixmaster interrupted. "Who died and made you leader?" He was annoyed because no one would let him throw a few slabs of the strange gray crust into his mixer to see how they would react with his beloved acids.

"Aw, come on guys," Scavenger wheedled weakly. But everyone else ignored him. So he sighed and went back to swinging his excavator shovel back and forth across the ground in a so-far-and-probably-forever-vain attempt to discover something interesting in its scan readouts.

Scrapper, the front-end loader whom Megatron had _officially_chosen as the team's leader (much to Hook's consternation), muttered a few of his standard curses. "Let's just get this hole drilled, shall we? Hook, get that rig into position and stop trying to do everyone else's job. Mixmaster, secure the support struts. And do it right the first time please," he grumbled, "Or we'll end up blowing ourselves into the Inferno."

"Huh. Sounds like fun," the mixer snorted.

* * *

_Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired._

_Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated_

_and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids_

_and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing_

_simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds._

_— Donald J. Cram_

0o0o0

_I can't see anything familiar_. Cosmos's thin voice hissed through the comm-link. He sounded small and frightened and alone. _There aren't even any landmarks to show, um, which one was which, you know? Which areas were bits of Primus, and which were parts of Unicron?_ He forced a weak laugh.

_It's all right, Cosmos. Just give me the facts. Pretend this is some new planet you've just discovered._

As he tried to encourage the orbiting shuttle-bot, Jetfire caught Sixshot watching him thoughtfully. Annoyed, he turned his back on the enigmatic Decepticon, and hunkered down to peer into a too-small, too-low vid-screen. It displayed each swath of mapping as Cosmos sent it through the comm-link. _You're scanning in full color, aren't you, Cosmos?_ he queried via the comm-link._ No filters or alt-light reads yet? Because I'm only getting shades of gray..._

"Probably because this is a gray planet," Reflector commented dryly to no one in particular.

_No filters,_ confirmed Cosmos. _I wish I could tell you different._

Jetfire's nerves were twanging, and his temper short. "I don't see how we can live here. I've never seen anything like this." He scowled over his shoulder, "Not even in your aftermath, Sixshot. This planet is like nothing so much as a... a color-bled corpse!"

The soft-spoken destroyer said nothing.

_"Duh,"_ commented Reflector.

Jetfire glared down at the short camera-mech's gray-purple back.

"Jetfire, look here." Perceptor's taut, staccato voice cut through the mounting tension. The scientist had transformed into a large microscope, the better to perform his examinations. Jetfire came over and peered into the eyepiece.

"As you can see," Perceptor said in suppressed excitement, "The crust material is unlike anything I have ever encountered. While its chemical structure suggests a mineral of some unknown type, it appears to also have, er, shall we say _unusual_ intra-cellular components... " He waited, wanting Jetfire's confirmation.

The tall white mech just stared down through the lens at the much-magnified patterns, his brow furrowed. "But that's-"

"Impossible," agreed Perceptor. "But, well... I assume you've noticed it too, Beachcomber?"

The blue minibot looked up unhappily from the rough slab he had on a folding table. "I've run all my scans," he reported. "Magnetic, seismic, sonic, infrared... Perceptor's right." He shrugged. "Crystals can grow, sure. But they shouldn't have cells like these." He scrubbed a dusty hand across his visor (which only succeeded in smearing it further). "This place is freaky, man. I'm generally in favor of life 'finding a way' and all, but this stuff is almost... organic. Living metal. But, you know, _dead._" He shrugged. "I don't get it."

Jetfire sighed, and straightened from the microscope's viewfinder. "I used to think I knew something about how the universe functioned," he said. "Now..." He stared off into the distance, following Hound's encircling dust-trail. "I've seen a lot of impossible things during the last few quartex. I'm not sure I know anything anymore."

He turned back to Perceptor. "Go ahead and transform, and hand me those crust-samples. I'll send up the first carrier drone, and get this material to Wheeljack for analysis. We need to find out what we're dealing with. Reflector!" he called, "Document these cross-sections, please."

"Hooray. I get to take pictures of ugly rocks," the purple, green, and gray camera-bot grumbled. But in a few kliks he was downloading not just the images Jetfire had requested, but a high-definition panoramic view of everything around their little landing site.

"Good work," Jetfire complimented, somewhat grudgingly.

While everyone was busy, Hound drove back into camp without a fuss, and transformed quietly.

"Anything to report?" Jetfire inquired.

"No sign of life or movement besides us," replied the dark green scout. "Nothing interesting in sight for mega-miles, except those creepy outcrops just East of us – funny coincidence, us landing next to them. I hope," he added with a forced laugh.

Jetfire huffed. "We'd better investigate those things next, I suppose," he said unhappily.

"Yes..." Hound was staring intently past his captain's right shoulder. Without a word of explanation, he pushed around the tall white mech to stare into the monitor beside him. It was currently scrolling through the many pictures the Decepticon camera had recorded. "Uh, Reflector?" Hound's voice was strained. "Have these pictures been altered or retouched in any way?"

"Of course not!" Reflector shot back, offended. But something in Hound's manner made him go on, "Why?"

"These show three standing formations."

"Uh, yes...?"

Hound straightened up and pointed. "There are seven of them out there now."

The six mechs stared dumbly at the bulgy shapes sticking up from the ground not too far off. Without quite meaning to, they drew closer together.

_Cosmos?_ Jetfire commed anxiously, _Anything... new?_

_I'm not sure what to tell you,_ the little Autobot replied. _I just finished my last orbit, but my previous scans aren't jibing with the ones I'm making now. I was about to go around again to double-check..._

_Don't bother. You'd better get down here and stick close to us. Something's... come up._

Jetfire looked into the frightened faces of his team members. His base-program wanted to scream, _"Mech-eating zombie-rocks! Run for your lives!"_ But an expedition captain did not give orders like that. So he put on an outward calm. "Sixshot," he said, "Transform and take rearguard. Hell, change into that crazy space-gun, if you like- what is it, Mode 5 or Mode 6? - whatever. Never thought I would say this, but I'm glad we'll have your firepower at our backs." He paused. "We _will_ have your gun guarding rearward, right?"

Sixshot's masked face showed no expression. He just shrugged, and transformed into a gigantic, flying gun (with a barrel that the smaller bots could have walked into easily), and then turned, hovering, to aim that barrel at the hideous growths. As he did so, an eighth drooping protuberance raised up out of the ground.

Reflector yipped, and jerked back against Hound.

Clanking in haste, the Autobot team-captain transformed into a large cargo-jet. "Let's move!" he cried as he let down the ramp into a capacious rear cargo bay. "Everybody get in."

* * *

_While the rational mind is important, we gain a new perspective when we learn_

_how many of the greatest scientific insights, discoveries, and revolutionary inventions_

_appeared first to their creators as fantasies, dreams, trances, lightening-flash insights,_

_and other non-ordinary states of consciousness._

_-Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold_

o0o0o

They lay together on a single berth, limbs so enmeshed that they seemed more like a single organism, than a separate mech and femme. Over millennia, Prime and Elita's frames had adapted (and re-adapted) to one another: facets and flanges lining up and interlocking till whenever the two bots came together, they clicked.

Both were offline. But she was dreaming.

* * *

_In the dream, Ariel sat beside Orion Pax sat upon the roof of New Iacon's tallest tower, both bots swinging their legs over its side. Of course, few knew them by those names; and out of those who did, fewer still dared to call them by those long-lost monikers. But tonight it was as if the passing of uncounted time had left them somehow still unscathed, still reveling in dreams and plans and wishing on the brightest star._

_...Or, as Orion was doing now, wishing on the star just to the left of the brightest celestial luminary. "Why give all the work to one lone star?" he winked sideways to the slim, pink femme._

_She followed her bondmate's line of sight, till she found the star now carrying his wish. "I've been there," she remarked in sudden recollection. "Intarras-5 was uninhabited, and rich with iron and magnesium..." She settled in against him. "That was in the early days, before all the trade routes were shut down. I wonder what it's like now..."_

_"Want to go back and find out?" he inquired._

_"Not just yet," she said. She smiled under the shelter of his arm. "I'm content right here, for now."_

_They mused in silence for a while. "Do you think there's anyone out there looking back at us?" Orion wondered aloud._

_She looked out at the slice of cosmos before them. "Someone on Praum might be. Or maybe on Chokoneon..."_

_"I wonder what they call their constellations?" Orion stared up at the silvered sky, out at the tiny whorls of spiral galaxies, bright clouds of nebulae, and enigmatic swaths of dark matter. In the presence of such vastness, it was easy to feel small. The two bots curled up in the feeling, for it came to them so seldom._

_"There's the Chronarchitect," Orion said, pointing at a circle of yellow stars almost directly above them._

_"That's right. I'd almost forgotten," Ariel murmured. It had been a few eons since either of them had given a thought to the old stories told about half-imagined figures in the sky. "That's the Singer." She gestured to a ladder-like lineup of stars – a pattern that musicians used to say was a clue to the ultimate melody... if only they could manage to decipher it._

_"I like the Builder's Tools," said the red mech, indicating a cluster of small multicolored stars near the horizon. He snorted, suddenly. "We must have traveled a long way since I was forged. Remember how the Square and Compass used to be so far apart? They're almost overlapping, now."_

_Elita - Ariel - gave a long sigh. "We have come a long way." She reached up to touch Orion's hand on her shoulder, threading her fingers through his thick blue ones. Her gaze shifted down from the stars above them, to the twinkling lights of the expanding city far beneath. New-Iacon was still under construction. (There was hardly any place that wasn't.) _But someday,_ she thought, _We'll drop the prefix from the names, and newling mechs and femmes will think their planet's always been this beautiful._ She pursed her lips. _I hope they take good care of it. We've worked hard to rebuild it for them.

_Almost as if he knew her thoughts, Orion gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. "Some day, this will all be forgotten. There will be no memory left of all our wars, of all our follies... or even of us, my love." He drew her close. "It's a relief, I guess."_

_Elita snuggled into the familiar place at his side. "You know," she mused, "Wouldn't it be nice if after we are gone, this mysterious planet of ours could then become a star in its own right..."_

_"I like that," Orion agreed. "Imagine, some future being looking out into the night, and wishing upon Cybertron..." He smiled, lost in reverie._

_"I wonder if that wish would be granted?" Elita mused._

_"I hope so," Prime replied. Softly, he ran a thumb down her cheek-seam. "I hope so, dearest one."_

* * *

Elita onlined with a painful sense of loss. The Orion with her now had no such hope for the future.

She raised her face to his, and traced a finger down one of the finials spiking up from his darkened head. She pressed her brow against his helm, feeling her spark constrict. "Don't give up," she whispered. "Please. Don't give up on us."

* * *

_"Perfection would be a fatal flaw for evolution._

_Life's hold on life depends on God losing his grip on life every once in a while."_

_-Author Unknown_

o0o0o

Jetfire taxied to a stop along a relatively smooth stretch of quicksilver crust. "Hello, Scrapper," he hailed, trying to sound cheerful.

"Slag off," Bonecrusher warned. "This is our turf."

"I'm not disputing that," the white Autobot said wearily. He'd never liked dealing with this particular combiner team; but since they worked in similar fields, they'd rubbed shoulders – and chipped each others' paint – far more often than any of them would have chosen. He waited as the last of his teammates disembarked and transformed; then he tried to begin again. "We were wondering if you'd noticed anything strange about the formations around here...?" He left it as a question.

"Why? Isn't that what _you_ came to this lump to analyze?" Hook asked with a patronizing huff.

"Yeah," sneered Longhaul, "We've got enough on our docket as it is, without doing your work as well!"

"Look," Jetfire said, trying to keep his cool. "Just tell me how many of those outcrops were here when you started drilling."

"Count 'em yourself!" Mixmaster shouted. He waved a hand toward the strange tall shapes, but floundered suddenly. "Er, boss?" He whispered.

Hook looked up, though he was still not in charge of the unit. Scrapper listened and said nothing.

"How many of those things were there when we got there? Because, heh heh..." the mixer gave a weak chuckle, "I only remember there being, like, five or six..."

Both teams of mechs turned to follow Mixmaster's wavering finger. At least twenty outgrowths - ranging in size from half Cosmos's height to nearly twice Jetfire's size - stood ranged in grotesque parody of the interloping transformers.

Scavenger dropped his wrench. It clanged loudly in the sudden stillness.

_"Oh, scrap,_" somebody whispered.

Just then there came a final, cheery _Ding!_ and the great drill shut down with a slow, chugging _putt-putt-putt_ of its powerful engines. The bit had come to the end of its multi-mile extension cabling. According to the readouts on the holographic monitors, the toothed cylinder was now swinging free in a vast, open cavity down near the core of this mysterious planet.

* * *

_And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth?_

_or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?_

_-Exodus 4:11_

o0o0o

"Right then." Hook spoke softly but firmly. "Let's get this damn job finished so we can get out of this Smelting-Pit."

Jetfire and Scrapper shared a look. "You still planning to go down there?" the Autobot inquired.

The Contructicon captain glanced around, and made a face. "Orders," he said. But his expression was that of a mech who'd just been told to eat a mess of mudfins.

"We'll come along then, if we may," Jetfire declared.

But Beachcomber tugged at his arm. "A word?" he asked, with unaccustomed formality.

Jetfire nodded, and followed him aside.

"I'd like to stay topside, please," the dark-blue dunebuggy requested, looking up at his captain from knee-level. "I want to see why these outcrops are doing-" he shrugged, "-What they're doing. If it's a coincidence that they're only appearing at our landing sites, for instance."

"If you stay, then I'm staying with you." Cosmos piped up. The green minibot looked scared enough to start leaking, but spoke with a determined bravery. "You might need a lift," he told Beachcomber, "If things go bad out here."

Jetfire crouched down to meet the optics of the two little Autobots. "I've been told that the Minibots watch out for one another," he murmured, putting a dwarfing hand on each of their shoulders. "I'm glad to see it's true."

He rose. "Make sure you do get out if things get worse," he said sternly. "There's no need for heroics here. Get out before you can't."

The Constructicon commander interrupted with ill-grace. "Anyone else not going down the tunnel?" He directed the traditional air of belligerence toward those not of his own faction; but when it came down to it, the enemy you knew was preferable to the creepy rocks you didn't know on the dead planet that you'd once called home but that was now looking like the setting of your worst nightmares. Even Sixshot was welcome here, as long as his considerable weaponry was trained outward.

To a bot, everyone but Beachcomber and Cosmos stepped forward, grim-faced. "Count us in," said Hound.

"Right then," said Scrapper. "But as far as I'm concerned, it's every mech for himself. I ain't savin' any of your plating, if I'm busy saving mine. And incidentally..." He leered at the flightless Autobots. "I hope you've had your shock-absorbers serviced recently. It's gonna be a _very_ long jump down."


	3. Stage 3: Creatures of Stone

**Stage 3: Creatures of Stone**

_'They were apes only yesterday. Give them time.'_

_'Once an ape—always an ape.'…_

_'No, it will be different. … Come back here in an age or so and you shall see. ..._

– _The gods, discussing the Earth, in the movie version of Wells' _The Man Who Could Work Miracles _(1936)_

0o0o0

* * *

_**-Extract: Personal Log, Elita-One-**_

_I __like_ _having Orion back. Is that so horrible to say? Apparently it is, because I never do say it out loud. Not even – or especially – to him. _

_He probably already knows. But saying it feels like betrayal. Like selfish complaining. Like backing down from an unpleasant job. And that's not what I do. That isn't who I am. _

_I am Elita-One. I do the job that must be done. I make a point of - no, I take __pride_ _in - never complaining. But sometimes I wonder if I ought to be more honest. At least with myself. _

_So I write it secretly, in this private log where no one else will ever see it: _

I am glad that the Matrix was destroyed, if it means I get Orion back.

_But can he remember how to be himself again? Of that, I'm not so certain._

_**- Save / Delete ? -**_

* * *

"_Evolution is fascinating to watch. _

_To me it is the most interesting when one can observe the evolution of a single man._"_  
__-Shana Alexander_

o0o0o

He was not buried in the the Archive Ship - that hasty aggregation of rescued hard drives, piled helter-skelter where they'd been dropped by the armload - although the Cybertronian Archives had once been his most trusted refuge.

He was not perched atop the Pinnacle – Iacon's tallest tower – as he sometimes liked to do when feeling low. He'd loved the way it gave him a flier's optical viewpoint on the torrus-state - the closest thing to flight he could ever achieve as a ground-mech. But that glittering monument to Autobot ideals was broken, burned, and melted down into oblivion, along with Iacon and all the rest of Cybertron.

Packed as they were like retro-rats in some of Shockwave's cages, these days it took an extra dash of ingenuity to escape from one's fellow mechs. So Optimus had threaded his way down to the lowest storage hold of this shuttle, secured a hundred-meter cable to one of many sturdy lashing bars put in along the walls to help secure the cargo, looped its free end around his waist, opened the loading hatch, and _jumped. _

Now he floated at the end of his slim thread, his back to all those gathered vessels full of refugees - metal capsules as tiny and as frail as golden fire-beetles flickering in the darkness. He stared out at what he'd made of his homeworld.

_I didn't mean for you to die, _he said. At least, his vocalizer clicked; his mouth formed words; but no sound could carry out here. _I thought I understood what I was asking. _

There was no sign of either forgiveness or condemnation from the burnt-out planetary hulk which he addressed.

_Did you know this would happen? _

Nothing.

Only the immensity of space met his inquiry.

Prime flared into sudden anger. _Why didn't you tell me? _he cried out.

The dead planet spun slowly, inert.

_How could you abandon your children?_ Optimus waited for a last, long moment. Then dropped his gaze, and turned around the pull himself hand-over-hand back to the too-small shuttle that was his home now. _Why did you abandon me?_ he whispered.

* * *

_There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something!_

– _Thomas Alva Edison_

0o0o0

The tunnel was too tight for anything bigger than a Recordicon to fly down through it without getting tangled in the drill's lead-lines. It seemed that Scrapper's dig about the long, long jump had been nothing but bluster – much to everyone's relief. And yet somehow a very long rope-climb seemed anticlimactic. Not to mention dumb - if ugly outcrops could pop up out of the barren ground, what could they find within the heart of this mysterious, death-haunted world? No one wanted to rappel down into the mouth of the Pit. (Or worse.)

Reflector had to all but jump and wave his arms, before anyone thought to ask the knee-high mech to lead the way. He was the only bot there small enough to maneuver quickly in the shaft. Looking huffy but validated, the pint-sized Decepticon jumped into the dark mouth of the shaft.

Making his way on slow thrusters, Reflector transmitted rapid-fire images of the things he saw along his way over an open comm-channel. The larger bots pored over them, getting in one another's way and/or shouldering each other aside with curt threats.

When he finally reached the dangling drill-bit, Reflector found that it had stopped after breaking through the "ceiling" of a vast, dark cavern. Not even his camera-flash illuminated its far reaches. _You guys get down here!_ he commed. _I don't want to be crunched by some remnant of Unicron's consciousness or a monster with a taste for metal!_

Back on the surface, Scavenger tried again to be helpful: he passed around a can of axle grease. "For your hands," he explained, when one or two bots raised an eyebrow at him. "So you won't get stuck along the way, or wear grooves in your derma-plating."

"As long as we manage to _stop _when the time comes," Jetfire replied dryly. But he'd stared into the bore-hole long enough, and he had a mission to fulfill. He shrugged, and sat down on the tunnel's roughened edge, clunking his dangling feet against the slick, spiral-grooved sides. He reached back for a glob of Scavenger's thick blue-black grease and slicked his palms with it. Then he hunched in his wide, white wings, got a loose grip on two drill-cables, and then disappeared without preamble down into the blackness.

Everyone leaned in close to listen. The hissing whine of metal sliding against metal echoed loudly in the tunnel, like some alien rock concert heard from the sewer-system. After several tense kliks, Jetfire commed back to the huddled, waiting mechs. _I'm not dead,_ he said. _Come down if you're coming. Let's get this done quickly._

The eerie, morphing landscape added its own ominous urging to speed. While they'd been waiting, Beachcomber (tentatively scanning one of the most recent rock-thrusts), had been knocked aside as a second rose abruptly from the ground. Mixmaster gave a last, uneasy look around. "Slag this," he said, and leapt into the hole.

One by one, others followed, strung like beads along the hanging cables. Most of the bots were second-guessing this whole operation by this time. But right now more than anything they wanted to avoid some sort of a limb-cracking debacle at the bottom of this ridiculous slide.

When Jetfire had landed (with an undignified clatter and thunk) atop the free-hanging drill-bit, he'd leapt off quickly and transformed mid-air. Now he hovered, main hatch open, to receive each bot that scrambled from the swaying strand to jump into his cargo bay. The flight-capable Decepticons refused his hospitality, preferring to ignite their own thrusters instead.

"That's all of us," said Hound, as he brought up the rear. He pulled the hatch-gate shut behind him. "We're set, Jetfire."

"Acknowledged." The white jet-former circled in a slow descent, until he landed tentatively on a gently undulating surface. It was dull brown in color, thick-plated in a soft metal, and criss-crossed with inlaid piping. It was completely unlike the planet's outer surface; a whole new category of strangeness.

To say the cavern where the exploration team now found themselves was large would be an understatement. It was enormous enough to make even the tallest of the mechs feel small and insignificant. The atmosphere was cool and fresh, with no taint of charred metal, rot, or molten magma. (Hound even thought he felt a faint breeze brushing his cheekplates; this he duly reported.) They were in utter darkness: the bots' pale headlights - even Reflector's more powerful flashes - only cut a little way into the black. The glimpses he saw reminded Jetfire of the oldest, deepest tunnels in the old, familiar Cybertron - places he had only made his way to once, and that unwillingly. Those tunnels, however, had been small, cramped things - only as like this vast cavern as a lugnut is like a wheel. "All right, my fellow bots," he said. "Let's find out what we're dealing with down here."

Perceptor transformed and examined all the coppery-brown bits of this and that pushed helter-skelter underneath his lens. Bots scattered every which way, some bent almost double as they examined the strange surface on which they were walking. Those who could fly followed the floor as it curved up into the wall, and then became the ceiling. Sixshot stood guard, as he had promised, every light on his lofty chassis set to full. "Doesn't look much better in here than it did out there," the Phase-Sixer remarked dryly.

"Just get what we need for an accurate report," Jetfire reminded his team. "Then we can get out of here."

"_Forever, if we're lucky_," Bonecrusher added under his breath.

* * *

_If not you, who? If not now, when?  
- The Talmud_

0o0o0

"Prime!"

There was no answer.

Megatron pounded a fist on the door. "Come out of there! Primes don't have time to pout!"

A voice inside proclaimed, "I'm no Prime, Megatron. Not any more."

Just barely, the Decepticon refrained from kicking in the door. He cycled three slow intakes, and counted to eleven. Then through his teeth, he said, "Let me in, _Prime_. I'm asking _nicely._"

The door slid up. Optimus confronted his former assailant nose-to-nose, arms gripping the doorjamb to bar entry. "I... am _not... _a _Prime_," he said slowly and distinctly. "Or is it just that you can't stand the thought of being bonded to anyone _less_?" He stopped, exhaled, and made a stiff, apologetic gesture. "I am not myself," he explained dryly. "But come in, if you will." He drew aside, leaving the doorway unblocked. "What is is you require?"

Megatron stood there in the shuttle's narrow passageway, silent. Then slowly his face closed up. Like a portcullis, the old mask slid down, narrowing his red optics to bright slits, and locking his mouth into a stark, uncompromising line. "It seems I don't require anything of you, Orion," he said stiffly. "You are right. You're not a Prime."

The big Decepticon turned on his heel, and marched down the hall, away.

Optimus... blinked.

He called after his bond-brother.

But Megatron had fled.

* * *

"_Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, _

_but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution."_  
_-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe_

o0o0o

"My greatest creation." For something like the thousandth time, Grapple murmured the phrase to himself as he stared mournfully out of the window at the dead planet below. He spoke the words like a mantra; for they were his only reminder that he had ever been the architect of anything so wonderful as the Pax-Cybertronian Tower.

And indeed it had been a glorious thing. So tall it had been visible along the rim of Cybertron even from orbit, it had nonetheless seemed to swing weightless against the sky. Strung with carefully-calibrated solar sails, it had danced with the winds instead of standing against them. Sunlight that shimmered in the sheets sent power to the tower's grid, and to the surrounding city as well. "Will I ever build something half so lovely again?" he wondered aloud. He sighed as his gaze returned from the golden hues of the past, back to the dead gray of the present. "Will I ever get the chance?"

"I doubt anyone could stop you." There came a soft chuckle, and Hoist, who could be surprisingly quiet for so bulky a bot, appeared beside him.

But Grapple was too depressed to respond to his friend's old sneaking-up trick. "What will I build them with, may I ask?" he demanded in a flash of anger. "We didn't exactly bring a lot of materials with us. And even if we had, what would I build on? _That_?" He flung out an arm toward the charred coal of a planet floating beyond the thick-paned window.

For several moments, the only sound was the constant underlying rumble of the ship's slow-churning engines. Both Autobots stared at the featureless expanse of gray. Even the ever-upbeat Hoist doubted the exploration crew would find anything down there which would warrant a return to such a place. Their home was a floating cadaver; trying to scrape a life out from it seemed like ghoulish desecration.

* * *

_You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.  
- Friedrich Nietzsche_

o0o0o

Shockwave was not a mech who had been blessed with much capacity for expression. But if he were, he would have smiled to himself as he correlated all the data coming in from the away team. He took a secret pleasure in the knowledge that the terse reports Jetfire was sending him were galling to the tall white Autobot. They had been forged as fellow scientists, but it was common knowledge that Jetfire disliked his purple counterpart. Their morals and their methods clashed.

Wheeljack, however, was another matter. No mech had yet been forged who could repress that bot's enthusiasm. Shockwave flinched inwardly as his thoughts were once again broken into by that ebullient nasal voice.

"Hey Shocky! C'mere an' look at this!"

Shockwave glanced in supplication at the ceiling, hoping that one of the ill-fitted tiles would fall on Wheeljack's head.

"This is the most fun I've had in ages!" the Autobot was crowing. "I ain't used to having mineral samples stand up and slaggin' _wave_at me."

"Mineral matter is not sentient, and does not acknowledge your observation," the Decepticon said wearily, "No matter how much moonshine engex you've drunk while I wasn't looking."

But the engineer kept babbling (his headfins flashing frenetically), as he all but dragged the taller bot over to the other exam table.

Reluctantly, Shockwave deigned to put his single yellow optic to the microscope's eyepiece.

He stared for a long, long time.

"Neat, huh?" suggested Wheeljack.

* * *

_Then the word of the __Lord_ _came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord __God__! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the __Lord_ _said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the __Lord__. Then the __Lord_ _put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the __Lord_ _said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant._

_-Jeremiah 1: 4-10 (KJV)_

o0o0o

"I take it that did not go well?" Elita said, entering.

"That's the understatement of the vorn." Optimus held his arms out to Elita like a supplicant begging redemption. After a moment, she went into them.

"He wants me to be someone that I don't know how to be without the Matrix. They all do." He looked down into his bondmate's fathomless blue optics, questioning. "Except, perhaps, for you?" He left it as a question.

Elita drew back a step and propped one hand on her hip, studying her bondmate. "What would you say if I asked you to run away with me?" she asked without preamble.

Optimus gaped. "Is this a trick question?"

Elita met his optics squarely. "No."

Optimus turned to stare out at the far-off stars, so crisp and cold through the small porthole window. He thought what it might be like to abdicate: to leave behind the burden of authority, the burden of his failure, the everyday reminders that he'd been demoted, rejected, unmade.

He tried to imagine doing that. But he could not.

"I don't know, dear one," he said at last. "Optimus or Orion, I don't think I have it in me to just walk away and leave them."

Elita's shoulders slumped. She shook her head and laughed. "No one but you is shocked to hear you say that."

Optimus crossed the room and drew her in, holding her tightly as he had on the long-ago night Orion Pax was reformed as the Prime. "Are you disappointed, sweetheart?"

"A little." She gave him a crooked grin. "But far less, I suppose, than I would have been if you'd said yes. We've never been quitters, you and I."

He gave a little rueful snort, conceding. "You certainly are not." His spark fumbled out along their bond, as his heart always did whenever he remembered their four million years apart. They had never quite recovered from that long, long separation.

"Orion," Elita called softly. "I want to remind you of something." With one hand drawing his helm down to touch her own, she pressed the other flat against his chest. "Try for me now. Please."

Optimus had always found it ironic that he, of all mechs, should be so inept at spark-to-spark communication. But he understood why she had asked. Sure, Elita could simply have jacked into one of his input ports and downloaded whatever files she wanted to share with him there and then; but there was always something so detached and clinical about such an exchange. Besides, any old bot could download things into his processor. It was Communication 1.0 in the Newling's Handbook of Instructions. A share down along their bond would be more intimate, more true.

"I will try," he told his lifemate. He drew her in, two-into-one, metal-to-metal, because, well, he loved her. And because there was a world-bound part of him that found spark-communing easier if Elita was physically right there. Then he shut down his optics and hearkened to her audible spark-pulse, his soul open in the unremitting trust of lifelong love.

He felt her thoughts like flitting fingers, gently rummaging through his old memories. When she'd found what she was looking for, she brought it to him delicately, as if in cupped, reverent hands. Following her suggestion, he opened the record she held up to him.

_He'd come online sprawled flat on his back, looking up into a glorious sky. _

_He'd tried to lift himself, but hissed in sudden, searing pain. His arm was gone. He'd called for help, but only made some useless clicking sounds. His comm unit was hanging by a single wire from the open gash across his throat._

"Is this-?" Optimus lurched back a little, and for a moment the bond closed down. "Why would you want me to remember-?"

"Trust me, dearest," Elita repeated, holding his gaze with her own.

Warier now, Optimus tightened his hold on his bondmate, anchored himself in her still, blue optics, and opened himself up to the memory of Megatron's very first betrayal, so long ago, when he had been Orion Pax and she had been Ariel.

_He'd rolled onto his other side, slipping in a pool of his own inmost energon. _

_When he'd finally managed to raise himself on his left arm, Orion Pax looked down at his body to assess the damage. A blast-burned hole cut through him, where his right arm and most of his right side had been up to a few moments ago. His right leg ended just above the knee. _

_His focus wavered, widened: Ariel, shot clean in half, was sprawled beside his torn-off stub of leg; and Dion lay a little way beyond, missing a head. _

_It was so tempting, then, just to lie down and die with them._

_He shook his head, trying to make sense of the criss-cross message-fragments his buzzing processor was flashing at him. That flying mech whom he had so admired - that 'Metatron' or 'Megatron,' whatever his name was - had shot him and his friends. Orion had always been a trusting soul, eager to discover new things to love about everyone he met. Now he felt something like a shell close over his sputtering spark. He'd trusted Megatron. He'd wanted to be like him._

_Ariel gave a tiny whimper. _

_And Orion Pax out of old Iacon raised himself up on one good knee, grabbed the femme's armor in his one functioning hand, pushed Dion's lifeless form ahead of him, and crawled toward the nearest first-aid station. _

_He had made it almost half a mile before he collapsed and did not get up again. _

Optimus blinked and stumbled a little, surprised to have two working legs. Elita did not let him fall, but neither did she let him shrink away.

"You never left us," she whispered. She cupped a hand to his bared cheek. "Matrix or not, it's you, Orion. It's who you've always been. You take care of people, my love. And you never, ever, ever, ever lie down and give up."

* * *

_The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious—_

_it is the source of all true art and science._

-_Albert Einstein_

o0o0o

Longhaul was feeling irritated, and disinclined to contribute. So he found the most inane task he could think of: following one of the pipelines that ran in loops throughout the floor. He told himself he'd find out if it went anywhere interesting. But honestly, he didn't care. The Constructicon chased the thin duct into a wide alcove some way off from the other mechs. His shadow made the corner dark as pitch.

Except that it wasn't. Longhaul crouched down on hands and knees to look more closely. "Uh... guys?" he called. "Am I going crazy, or is this floor glowing?"

Scrapper and Jetfire hurried over, and bent down beside the burly green Decepticon. "Lights out!" the Autobot ordered. "All except you, Sixshot," he added as an afterthought. "We don't want any nasty surprises coming at us in the dark." Scrapper signalled his own team to follow suit. Silence fell as lights went out. Darkness pressed in around them - all around, except in one far corner, where Longhaul, Scrapper, and Jetfire stooped to stare.

The three mechs shot glances at one another, seeking confirmation. Was this just some optical glitch brought on by the darkness? But soon it became all too apparent that this was no delusion. What had been a barely-perceptible glow in one pipe strengthened to become a spreading surge of soft white light. Some chemical was flowing into the million large and small ducts running throughout every surface of this subterranean chamber.

The bots retreated, stepping daintily to avoid breaking open one of the mysterious pipelines half-buried in the floor. They huddled close around Sixshot's braced legs, standing shoulder-to-shoulder regardless of original team or faction, watching the creeping light come toward them with the horror they would usually reserve for a slow-spreading flood of metal-eating acid.

The glowing liquid flowed beneath their cringing feet, condensing in luminous pools at all the cavern's low-points. But some force from deeper down was pumping this strange substance up. in fits and starts, it made its way up walls and onto far-up ceilings, till finally the whole cavern was dimly lit in ghostly white. Now by the hundreds, half-glimpsed tiny beads of brilliance began surging through the pipelines, darting as if with swift, independent purpose. And although the mechs would have all said it was completely silent, they all shared a sense (or perhaps fear) that not far beneath their feet something immense was humming, pulsing, moving, breathing, _waking_.

"Where is this stuff coming from?" somebody whispered. "What's happening here?"

"Better find out," growled Hook.

Jetfire stepped with trepidation onto a particularly fragile-looking duct. Nothing happened. It simply pinched closed, and other nearby lines took up the flow. He shrugged. "It's further down and in, for us," he said simply. "We've got to find the source." He forged ahead, leading the way toward the steepest, widest slope downhill. "Come on," he called. "After this, we can all go back to our nice, safe shuttles."

"Oh, sure. If we can make it out alive," Bonecrusher grumbled.


	4. Stage 4: Creatures of Steel

**Stage 4: Creatures of Steel**

_Descended from the apes? My dear, we will hope it is not true. _

_But if it is, let us pray that it may not become generally known. _**  
— **_Anonymous_

o0o0o

Prime shuffled through the stack of datapads on Megatron's cramped corner desk. "Been studying historical alliances, I see."

"Put those back exactly how you found them," Megatron ordered. He tapped a stylus absently against the scratched screen of his data-slate. "Alliances are necessary, since my exalted Brother will of course refuse to simply conquer a new planet."

Optimus ignored the sally. He flopped onto the only other flat surface in the Decepticon Commander's temporary quarters. "Your berth's a half-inch wider than mine," he remarked.

"Oh goody." Megatron did not look up from his work. "Unfortunately, we are destitute. Nothing to trade except ourselves. And let me tell you how much I look forward to indentured servitude." Megatron rotated his desk-chair till he faced Prime, and slapped his knees with forced good humor. "But enough of my worries. How soon do you plan to leave us?"

Optimus was lying on his stomach with his head propped in his hands. (It was a small failing of his that he enjoyed tweaking Megatron's sense of decorum.) But he looked up, surprised. "How did you know?" he asked.

"I see, you know," said Megatron. He tapped his temple. "I observe. You were plotting with Elita in your quarters not ten breems ago. Stop slagging with me and give me a timetable, so I can figure out-" his vocalizer cramped, "how to do without you."

"You won't have to do without me."

"I have been doing _everything _without you. While you mooned around lamenting the loss of your precious Matrix, I carried your sorry aft. I fielded a million questions - lied and told them all everything was fine. I did your work as well as mine. Ever since you got our gods killed, I held myself together while you fell apart."

"I seem to recall your being present at the Heart of Primus, when the idea of reunification was first broached. In fact, I've got a sound-file stored of you giving consent..."

With sudden ferocity, Megatron swept the neat contents of his desk off onto the floor. Datascreens, old rollfilms, and memory sticks caromed off the walls and floor. It took a long time for them all to clatter into silence.

"I never meant it to end up like this!" the Decepticon shouted. "You made me think it would somehow be hearts and rainbows all the way! But instead of a happy reunion, they killed each other. They left us alone and homeless. Thoughtful of 'em. Now to top things off, my bond-brother's trying to run out on-!"

Outside in the shuttle's narrow passageway, the flow of footsteps faltered. Megatron realized that he was shouting. With an effort, he lowered his voice to a level which would not carry through his wafer-thin office door. "You think that you're the only one with a hole on your chest?" he hissed. "You are a traitor and a coward and I am ashamed of you."Optimus sat up, and swung his legs over the side of the charge slab. "I'm not leaving," he said.

"Don't lie to a Decepticon, Optimus-not-a-Prime."

"You're partly right. We were discussing whether I should abdicate." Optimus adopted a businesslike posture, spine straight, hands on knees. "But you don't really believe I could go through with it, do you? I mean, you _know _me, Megatron. You think I could turn tailpipe and leave my arch-nemesis in sole charge of our people?"

"I _thought _I knew you." Megatron snorted. "Now I'm not sure I know anything."

"Nor I..." Optimus turned to stare out through the porthole window at what was left of Cybertron. It was a while before he spoke. "I asked the Medics once why they could not save Dion," he mused quietly.

"What?" Megatron exploded. He hated Prime's habit of conversational detours. But the red mech always made his point.

"They told me that Elita and I weren't supposed to live either." Prime met his bond-brother's red gaze and held it. "They told me we were an anomaly, perhaps even a miracle; said that I should be grateful. They said that by the time they found us, there was little they could save except our sparks. They told me how they built us new frames out of scraps from the emergency supplies, covering up the welds with shiny paint." He made a little half-shrug. "Sometimes my processor still glitches, and I get neural twinges from my old life as Orion Pax: the stump of my shorn-off leg grinding against the road; the numbness seeping up my arm as I fought not to lose hold of Elita; the drip of inmost energon from my rattling engine..."

"But what the Pit does that have to do with-?"

Optimus rose, invading the perimeter which Megatron liked to keep clear around himself. He knelt down in front of the slumped gray mech, so that he could meet his Brother's fiery gaze optic-to-optic. "I have been shot full of holes," he said, "Dismembered, reprogrammed, and sent through a faulty space-bridge into a dimension that does not even _exist_. But Megatron, _I am still here. _Without the Matrix, I may or may not not still be a full-forged Prime. But I am definitely still Orion Pax." Roughly, he grabbed Megatron's bowed head in two hands. "And I do not leave _anyone _behind."

Megatron sat as if he had been frozen. Optimus waited. When the gray mech's hard veneer finally cracked, it was with the shattering violence of an ice block under too much pressure. Megatron threw his arms around his Autobot bond-brother and clung there, his vocalizer clicking feebly.

"I've got you, Megs," said Orion. "I've got you."

* * *

_Evolution is chaos with feedback_

_-Joseph Ford_

o0o0o

Last in the line of bots making their way in single-file down the far-too-narrow, far-too-squishy tunnel, was Bonecrusher. The Constructicon had not taken the rearguard out of vanity or altruism. He hoped something (not _too _scary) would come out of the darkness behind them, so he could pound it. All this sneaking around in cramped spaces was shredding the last remnants of his nerves. He was within a micrometer of punching Scavenger in his slack-jawed face, simply out of irritation.

Jetfire had asked Sixshot to take point position. Captain at the head leading by example was all well and good; but there were times when having bigger (biggest?) guns up front was worth a hit to his own reputation. So Jetfire followed behind the weapon-bristled Phase-Sixer, lights on full and his two laser-pistols ready in his hands.

Thin lambent pipes still ran along every surface (some even draped across the passage for short distances, tripping unwary feet and snagging the taller mechs' heads and shoulders). But in this tunnel the ducts were mostly so thin that, though still filled with the glowing liquid, they were more a hindrance to night-vision than useful illumination.

However, when the troop rounded a corner and came into view of the far end of the passage - lit up brilliantly with flickering white light- things changed. They crowded to a halt, first off. Hound hissed a soft request that he be allowed to take point. He's scouted into (and back out of) many an enemy camp without being detected. At a word, Sixshot turned sideways, and the much shorter green Jeep-former clambered over his feet.

The file of transformers shuffled as quietly as a troop of metallic beings could, watching the scout advance toward the bright mouth of the tunnel. Jetfire gave him credit: he was blending in quite well. But as they'd made gone deeper, the tunnels had grown ever more strange and organic; so it was now no familiar sheet-metal against which the green mech now hid. Hound had simply pressed himself _into _the flexible walls.

_Is it safe? _commed Jetfire

_I think so, _came the whispered comm. _But honestly, Jetfire, how can we tell?_

_What do you see?_

_It's a big room, roundish, covered with a lot more of those pipe-things. And they're all converging on something up... _Jetfire could see Hound craning his neck. _I can't quite see..._

Without waiting for orders, Sixshot tromped forward till he stood beside Hound. He led with the huge rifle in his right hand, optics trained to spot the slightest movement. He glanced back once at Jetfire. Then he fired a shot into the center of the room.

Clattering like a falling line of dominoes, all the mechs in the tunnel leapt backwards. They waited, trapped and helpless, for catastrophe.

But nothing happened.

"What in the Pit was that?" Jetfire shouted, since the silent comm seemed moot. "Were you trying to get us killed?"

On the far side of the chamber, there was a blackened area about a foot wide, where the lowest setting of Sixshot's weapon had made its impression. Dying flames guttered fitfully around its edges. Masked and inscrutable, the powerful Decepticon shrugged his tall shoulders. "We know it's safe to enter," he explained. "No reaction."

Jetfire sucked air into his systems. Technically, Sixshot was under his command. But even Megatron was rumored to bring several trusted officers along for backup, when he gave orders to Sixshot. Jetfire glared. "We'll discuss this when we're topside." Jaw tight, he turned back to the packed-in bots behind him. "Everyone forward march!" he called. "But carefully."

* * *

_A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated _

_from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation _

_characters which promote or guarantee reproductive isolation _

_when the external barriers break down. _**  
— **_Ernst Mayr_

o0o0o

**"**Boys," called Elita from the doorway. There was no response.

Elita smiled sadly. There were times when, despite being among the tallest of their kind, Prime and Megatron both could seem so small.

"Mechlings," she called again, more gently. "We're needed."

Blue light slowly returned to her bondmate's optics, as he turned his head to her. He held out his arm, inviting.

"We're needed," she repeated. But she took his hand, and let herself to be drawn into the two mechs' huddle. "Wheeljack and Shockwave say there's something odd with some of the samples the exploration team sent up."

"I heard the comm," said Prime. He pressed his cheek to hers. "But before we rush off anywhere, I want to make sure we're all OK." He looked her over. "Are you?"

Elita shrugged. "If I weren't, you two would be last to know."

Megatron roused himself. "Hey!" he protested.

"It's not malice; it's self-reliance," Elita said.

"You used to rely on your best friend Orion," her bondmate reminded her gently.

Elita turned away so that neither mech could see her face. Every line in her slim frame was taut. "I missed you," she admitted. Her fists clenched. "I sometimes wished you'd never gotten the Matrix. But I never meant it to be taken from you. And I never meant for Primus to-" She choked. "You have to believe me!"

Optimus put a light hand on her shoulder. "I do, dear one." He drew the femme Commander into a warm embrace. "I've got you, Ariel," he whispered as she shivered against him.

Megatron harrumphed awkwardly. "Shouldn't we go find out what the lab-mechs are up to? Wheeljack said something about a rock that waved at him..." He broke off before giving his opinion of the engineer's dubious sanity.

"Yes," Prime replied. He shrugged, and flashed a sideways grin. "Besides, who knows - perhaps they have discovered something wonderful." Ever the optimist, Orion Pax keyed the door open, and led the way down to their cruiser's miniscule flight deck.

* * *

_Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall: for sittest thou to judge me after the law, _

_and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law? And they that stood by said, _

_Revilest thou God's high priest? Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: _

_for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.  
Acts 23:3-5 (KJV)_

_o0o0o_

Astrotrain cursed his dumb luck. When the klaxons had first gone off back on old Cybertron (had it really been only a few short quartex ago?), he had jumped with Blitzwing into the first evac-shuttle they had come upon. And for a while, he _had _been lucky. He'd ended up sharing a ship with Swindle and the rest of the Combaticons. And Swindle was always good for a "deal," whether you wanted black market engex, a hit of The Juice, or some racy photographs of the new femmes down at Spangle's place. It had been a good party for a while, if you could get past the view of Cybertron out the window. (Engex and those racy photos helped out a lot with that.)

But then he had been summoned to a meeting on the Command ship. He had obeyed the call - nobody flouted Megatron's orders and got away with all their limbs attached - but Astrotrain hadn't seen much point in his being present. The other Lieutenants' discussion had been way over his head. Sending an exploration team down was a waste of everybody's time. No amount of scientific jargon could change what every mech saw out his porthole (if he had one): Cybertron was a corpse. But of course, no one had wanted Astrotrain's opinion.

After the meeting, the last of the triple-changer's good luck had run out. For Megatron had noticed him, and recalled his more useful alt-mode. He'd been ordered to stay aboard the Command cruiser, as a ship-to-ship transporter in service of his Glorious Leader.

For the first time in his life, Astrotrain felt sorry for Jetfire. He and Blitzwing had shared many a private joke at the white mech's expense, calling him the Autobots' taxi. Karma was a real glitch, sometimes.

"All aboard," Astrotrain grumbled, as Megatron, Optimus Prime, and Elita-One clambered into the one-size-fits-anyone cargo hold of his space-shuttle mode. He threw in an ironic train whistle. But his leaders were engrossed in their hushed, urgent conversation, and took no notice of him.

"Shockwave's frigate," Megatron ordered, in the same tone he'd have used to get a cube of Premium Unleaded out of one of the old wall-mounted energon dispensers.

Astrotrain swore. But he obeyed.

There was no surer way to court eavesdropping than to whisper, so Astrotrain listened closely as he threaded his way between the close-clustered rabble of refugee ships. The three leaders sounded nervous and excited. "Perhaps this is the breakthrough we've been waiting for," he heard Prime say. "I admit it's not what I was expecting, but we might as well hope..."

Astrotrain's luck again betrayed him, for in space there was no way to come to a brakes-screeching, passenger-pummelling halt. He desperately wanted to shake them.

"Look!" he demanded, slewing around to face the ruins of his home planet. "_Look, _will you!" he shouted. "It's dead. It's fragging _dead. _No matter how much you want to wake up and find out this was all just a bad dream; or that the old stories of Maker and Unmaker might _mean _something, it's _still dead! _There's no grand moral meaning. And there's nothing we can do to fix it. It's dead! And we're all going to die too, if we stay here staring at that poor pathetic hunk of slag. So _wake up_! Stop fooling yourselves before it's too late for the rest of us!"

Astrotrain waited, panting, to face Megatron's outrage at his insubordination. But not one of the Command trine chided him.

"Go on," said Megatron finally.

The triple-changer choked. His engines shuddered. "You know," he said, "When I saw Cybertron unfolding, when Pit-slagging Primus the Creator, God Himself turned and looked right into my fragged-up soul... well, I almost believed that our lives meant something. That maybe it had all been worth it."

He ground his gears, and the walls of his cargo hold wavered for an unnerving instant. "But then I had to watch him die. You, Prime - you told us we could save him. But that was a Smelter-loving lie." He snorted. "Primus died. Unicron died. And now we're not just homeless, but godless as well - right after we've had belief crammed into our gullets. Where do you get off, telling us that we'll somehow- That there's _hope?_**"**

Prime shifted - the triple-changer felt it through his skin - but mercifully the Autobot refrained from making any speeches.

"Shockwave's shuttle, Lieutenant," Megatron repeated.

Unnerved, Astrotrain resumed his original flight-path, and maneuvered into the little landing bay of Shockwave's assigned ship. He opened his hatch and let down the ramp.

"Come with us," Elita invited. "If this really is just some sick joke, you should be there when we're proved wrong. If only so that you can gloat."

Astrotrain hesitated, wondering if this was just some trick. But then every alarm in the fleet sounded, and he decided he would accompany the three Commanders after all. He transformed and ran with them, not once looking back over his shoulder.

* * *

_"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances,_

_the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life,_

_and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."_  
_-Albert Einstein_

o0o0o

The two teams of mechs ranged along the cavern's curving wall, their backs to its undulating surface. (Though this was small comfort, as the tangled pipes were pliable, and gave softly behind them.) Nothing here was solid. Nothing was still. The walls, so-called, were covered (or perhaps made up of) thousands of tangled, half-transparent ducts in varying thicknesses from half-again as wide as Sixshot's shoulders, to thinner than Reflector's little finger. These pulsed with the same luminescent liquid that they all had followed here; and running through the gel were still those tiny, flitting light-globules that moved as if alive.

The vast, round room dwarfed even the largest of their number. Hanging from the ceiling was an orb of near-unbearable brightness, but covered with so many pulsing energon ducts that the brightness only came in glimpses through the tangle.

"By the Source..." Hound whispered.

"Shut up, will you!" hissed Reflector. "That might just _be _the Source!"

"I think I leaked a little fluid..." Scavenger whimpered.

This was not the Core of Cybertron. Jetfire had been there; he had seen the Seal of Primus fast-shut in the floor of a locked room at the heart of their planet. Then, the vault of the great Seal had been a sleeping place: silent and dusty as a forgotten museum. There, the Creator had been hidden (and much easier to deny). But this now was certainly no empty chamber. This was no sleeping, senseless heart. This was the most vital and active thing Jetfire had ever seen.

"This is all your show, Mr. Scientific," said Mixmaster. "We've heard stories. You been to a place like this before. We ain't." He jerked his chin. "So up you get. Do some-" he snorted, _"research."_

Jetfire grimaced. The last time he'd found himself someplace like this, he hadn't liked it much. Then, he had waked to find that The Fallen (The Fallen! A walking myth!) had hooked him into a kind of four-pronged harness with three other mechs, then tapped their very sparks to waken... well, to waken Primus. Might as well call a spade a spade, even if that spade claimed divinity.

Recalling that first strange encounter, Jetfire shunted his vocalizer. "Primus?" he tried. He blinked, remembering the much more recent confrontation which he and all transformers had witnessed. He called again, even more hesitantly, "Unicron?"

He words fell flat, half-smothered by the heavy air. The bright heart hung just as it had before. Not one thing changed in the enormous chamber. The only sound was the same susurrating _whoosh_ of white-hot _something _pumping through a thousand interwoven ducts along the walls.

"Got any other brilliant ideas?" Hook sneered.

Jetfire transformed into his jet-mode; and waited, tense, on landing gear until the eerie echoes of his changing died. When this seemed to be tolerated (or more accurately, go unnoticed), the white scientist fired his engines, and flew up into the brilliant, heavy air.

He circled the huge, thick-swathed white orb once. Then twice. Then three times. It did nothing. At last, he transformed again, and made a grab for some of the thick piping leading outward from the center. The watching mechs waiting below him gasped. But Jetfire was not instantly electrocuted, and the ropes of half-translucent ducting held. _I'm going to see what this is, _he commed down, too afraid to call aloud. (Besides, who could have heard him so high up beside that living orb of light?) He began to make his way, hand over hand along the flexible conduits, toward the fiery whatever-it-was at the heart of all this.

Energy beat against his frame with a power that made even his thick carbon steel plating moot. It wasn't noisy, not exactly, but the tall white mech's audios felt clotted with heavy sponges. Jetfire was glad that he'd flipped down the facemask of his battle helm. But the orb was so bright and so hot at this close range that even with added protection his optic receptors were glitching. He would have raised a hand to shade them, but he was hanging some seventy feet above the floor, and didn't like to risk it. He swung an ankle up to hook over the sturdiest pipeline within his reach, un-subspaced a hand-held spectrometer, and stretched it out toward the light.

There was a flash and, blinded, Jetfire fell.

There was a great collective gasp. But even as Sixshot ran to catch the scientist, even as Hound shouted the first (and only) warning, a thousand snaking lines lashed out from every wall to snatch the company of mechs. The last thing Hound saw before he was drawn deep into the pulsing tangle was a white-hot noose catching the falling Jetfire by the neck.


	5. Stage 5: Creatures of Fire

**Stage 5: Creatures of Fire**

_And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy,_

_is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory._

_And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried,_

_and the house was filled with smoke._

_-Isaiah 6:3-4 (KJV)_

o0o0o

Nothing was happening. The strange 'eruptive anomalies' (as Perceptor had termed them) had shown no further signs of untoward activity. They'd made no reaction to Beachcomber's cautious dissection, or to Cosmos's quizzical prodding. They hadn't moved or changed, not even while the green minibot hummed the same tuneless three-note phrase for hours, which was enough to strain the nerves of even the ever-mellow Beachcomber. Once Cosmos tripped and caught himself against one of the smaller outcrops, and it collapsed with a cringing rasp of macadam. Yet still, none of the other growths seemed to take the slightest notice.

Eventually, the two minibots gave it up as a lost cause. They'd run all the tests they could think of. They'd spent several more breems shooting off wild theories. There was no way to logically explain why the outcrops had appeared, or why they were no longer appearing.

They wandered aimlessly a while, but gave it up after only a few breems, because the place was so depressing. In the end, they simply slumped down with their backs to the largest pillar, and set their systems to low-power mode. The two minibots resigned themselves to a very long, very boring wait.

"Wanna try some o' this?" Beachcomber asked. He brought out a flask of his home-brewed energon.

Cosmos shook his head. "Uh, no thanks." He distrusted anything with claims to that many improbable health benefits. Especially if it was a "secret recipe."

They sat there a few breems longer.

"I think the universe is telling me I'm a lot less important than I think I am," said Beachcomber. "Don't know what I was expecting to find up here, but we probably shoulda just gone down with all the others."

"Yeah..." Cosmos shifted unhappily. "I wonder what's taking them so long?"

Beachcomber powered down his optics. "Maybe the universe has a message for them, too."

Cosmos fell silent, and tried not to worry. "You know," when he could no longer bear the stillness, "Bluestreak told me a funny story once, about an old custom he'd heard about on Nebulos. He said that, if two members from different tribes meet in the desert regions, they have to-"

But that's when the landscape decided to make things much more interesting.

It started with a subterranean rumble. The two minibots exchanged glances, and leapt to their feet: back-to-back, weapons raised.

In worried hope, Cosmos began, "You think the other teams are coming back?" But at that moment the ground beneath them thrust upward into gyro-spinning height. The minibots fell flat on their faces, holding onto the roaring ground for dear life. Cosmos groaned, and shuttered his optics. Upon this narrow, groaning plinth, the shuttle-bot had as much chance of transforming as the bouncing pebbles underneath him had of sprouting wings and flying. They were trapped.

Like a great Serpent from the Sea of Rust; like the clash of continents fast-forwarded a million times, like a god stretching out cramped limbs, a city-wide arch of rough iron rose out of the crumbling crust of flaking metal, passed slowly overhead with a low wailing screel of metal, and came to rest at last in a long, low curve far away to the left. A battalion of copper-smooth spears surged up to unguessed heights a few miles off from the two quavering Autobots. And at the foot of the same cliff to which their fingers clutched, the planet cracked open to reveal a chasm of such unguessable depths, that Cosmos thought he could see a faint glow of white fire at the bottom. He shuddered, and held on tighter.

The sound of the planet in upheaval was far more than clamorous racket. It was a deep, harmonic chord: a sonata of chaos that rattled the armor on the protoform, and pressed in against the very spark. Beachcomber's audios shut down in self-defense. He tried to hail the away team; but could not loosen his clenched vox-box to form words. He could only lie there on his stomach as his fuel tanks sloshed and heaved, and try not to purge his energon (it would make the ground more slick.) Beachcomber drove his fingers deep into the shifting scree, and held on for dear life as the planet transformed over and around him.

Slowly as life drains from a wound, the planetary paroxysm ground away into the distance. The minibots caught far-off glimpses of other vast risings and settlings, some huge as city-states. Shockwaves from distant clashes out beyond the horizon came to buffet the two small robotic bodies. But at long last, after what seemed like several millennia, the air and the ground grew still, and suffocating silence fell.

Beachcomber raised himself up on a trembling elbow, and ventured a cautious whisper. "Cosmos! You OK?"

The rotund shuttle-bot rolled unsteadily back against the base of their broken-off pillar. He glanced down into the pit yawning beneath them, and shuddered. "I think so," he replied hoarsely. "You?"

"I still function." The blue dunebuggy gave a small, shaky laugh. "Better call this in, I suppose." Still flattened on the ground, he flipped open his communicator; it was scuffed where he'd held fast to the convulsing rock.

Jetfire? he squeaked. Shockwave? Wheeljack? Is anyone receiving me?

* * *

_"Since evolution became fashionable, the glorification of Man has taken a new form."_  
_-Bertrand Russell_

o0o0o

Dead End still took comfort in staring out the porthole windows, long after it had gone out of fashion to pine over their dead homeworld. The worst had already happened, and it was nice in a way to know that all this time, he had been right.

The glum Stunticon took out a lens-cloth from his sub-space, and began to calmly polish his optical lenses. He'd heard that mental glitches were a common side-effect of extended time spent in a spacecraft, so hallucinations were to be expected. When he was certain there was no chance of interference from an errant speck, he looked out at the planet one more time, slowing his vents.

Its surface was still moving.

After a klik, he shrugged, and turned back to his dwindling energon. "We are doomed," he said to no one in particular. Which was just as well, because the sudden squawk of multiple alarms drowned out his voice in any case.

* * *

_I was a young man with uninformed ideas._

_I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything;_

_and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them._  
_-Charles Darwin_

o0o0o

A lab with windows in a spaceship was a very bad idea - especially a lab containing Wheeljack. So perhaps the fleet might be forgiven for installing the two scientists in the inmost room of the toughest old frigate, and evacuating the rest of its inhabitants. Besides, not even Shockwave spent much time staring out at his dead homeworld any more. It was too depressing.

For millennia, Shockwave's lab had been the finest on Cybertron. It was equipped with a wide range of sensors, quantifiers, monitors, and data-crunching super-computers that could tell him not just what the planet and the universe were up to, but more often than not, what bots from Megatron to Moonracer were thinking. If he'd been working in his accustomed place, the oversight would never have occurred.

But instead, here Shockwave had a banged-up spectrometer, a back-pocket microscope, two wobble-legged tables, and a some crates of instruments so outdated they made him want to cry. (It didn't help matters that Wheeljack seemed to be in his element in this travesty of a lab.) Perhaps, given these circumstances, the Decepticon scientist could be forgiven his myopia. He simply didn't notice, when the planet started shifting.

Wheeljack would not have noticed anything amiss if it had hit him on the head. He was working. And he was humming to himself, because the work was so darn interesting.

The Autobot engineer had never bothered with alarms. They were useless and noisy things that all too often interrupted his work just at the most delicate stage. Over time, he'd become deaf to them. But when the sudden chorus of half-hearted bleating from the various lab alerts was joined by the ship's main klaxon, and then by the universal fleet alarm, the Autobot engineer raised his head and took bleary-eyed notice. He was surprised, not by the noise; but because for the first time in memory, the alarms did not seem to be his fault. He double and triple-checked his work to make certain of that. No, this was something bigger. He looked up at the monitor that till now had shown a featureless gray wasteland. He gasped, and dropped the box of surface samples he'd been carrying.

It was at this point that the three Commanders, with a gray and purple shuttle-train in tow, burst through the door. "What's happening?" demanded Megatron.

* * *

_In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne,_

_high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple._

_Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings;_

_with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet,_

_and with twain he did fly._

_Isaiah 6:1-2 (KJV)_

o0o0o

When Jetfire came online, he almost wished he hadn't. His optics were still blurry from the shock his systems had received when he'd reached out toward the great white light. He blinked to refresh their display several times before looking around, because he feared what he might see.

Bundles of ducting hung from the ceiling in a circle around the pulsating core. Here and there a familiar hand or a foot would stick out from the tangle. Not one of them was moving.

Jetfire knew he should be glad his optics had been left uncovered. He knew an effective Captain would assess this situation and devise some clever escape from it. But deep down he wished he'd been left blind to the full horror of his team's situation. That way he might have some excuse for not having a clue how to get them all out of it.

He twisted in the wrappings, but fell instantly stock-still as he felt an ominous pull at his spark casing. He shuddered. This was all too familiar. He'd been hooked in, again, his life-spark jacked into something he had absolutely no data on.

Interesting, said a bipartite voice within his head. After all you have learned, it is only now that you fear us?

* * *

_But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world,_

_not to the man to whom the idea first occurs._

_Not the man who finds a grain of new and precious quality_

_but to him who sows it, reaps it, grinds it and feeds the world on it._  
_— Francis Darwin_

o0o0o

Thus far, Wheeljack was handling the commotion much better than Shockwave.

"What about the mechs we sent to the surface?" Prime asked, all business.

"We lost contact with both away teams around the same time the planet did this." He jerked a thumb up at an overhead monitor, which showed a real-time model of the planet's convulsions (Shockwave's work), and held a datascreen out to the Command triad with the other hand. On its cracked screen (he'd dropped it when he'd seen what was happening), a shaky film from the camera mounted on Jetfire's drop-ship played in a repeating loop. It was hard to see some of what was happening; and they'd missed the beginning. But eloquent as a thousand reports was the vertiginous view of an opening chasm into which the ship tilted and fell for many harrowing seconds before exploding in a violence of white.

The leaders drew in a shared breath. Not even Megatron, who had once wanted to technoform other planets should this one fail, had ever imagined such a complete revision of a world.

"Do we know if anyone has survived down there?" asked Prime again.

"We can't be sure. Not even their locator beacons are online."

Optimus hunched his shoulders in. Elita put a quick hand on his arm.

The overhead comm clicked. -nyone up there receiving?

Prime's hand lept to his audial. We hear you, Beachcomber. What happened?

-chk- whole planet- You see this? -kk- like a Metrotitan rolling over-

Optimus cut in. Where are you? Are you functional? Is anyone there with you?

The tubby green shuttle-bot's warbling voice came on the line. I'm all right, Prime. Cosmos -chk- fine in a klik or two. Just -ktsh- gyros -tschhh- can transform and get us out of here.

Have you been able to make contact with the others? Megatron asked.

Beachcomber answered, sounding worried. I sent out a message, but I haven't -chk- anything back. They all went down -kkschhh- the core.

Right then. Stand by. Orion Pax looked at his bondmates. They nodded. The red and blue mech once again put a hand to his transmitter. Come on home, boys, he commed. We'll take it from here.

"What about me?" said Astrotrain.

"You'll take us down there, of course," said Megatron, flashing him an evil grin. "These Autobots can't fly."

* * *

_Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand,_

_which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:_

_And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips;_

_and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged._

_Isaiah 6:6-7 (KJV)_

o0o0o

It was not calling him by name. It was not reading off his serial number. It was not even shouting, "Hey, big guy; I'm talkin' to ya!" No, this call was much more personal, more knowing.

_Child,_ it said; and the sound was both in his head and a subsonic hum that vibrated throughout his whole body: _Be welcome._

Sixshot had never been a mech of many (or of any) friends. He was too big, too powerful, too scary to befriend. Under Megatron's orders, he had done things that no self-respecting Decepticon wanted to think about. Not even the most tipsy bot at the engex bar dared to swap war stories with Sixshot.

But despite all that, this somehow-familiar Voice that called him "Child" was unafraid. For all his armor and his size, Sixshot had never felt so naked or so small.

Nor had he ever felt such shame.

He was captive to a force he did not recognize or understand, bound head to toe in the same tubes of liquid light that he had once found beautiful. And one of those tubes was jacked into his spark core.

Sixshot was no stranger to a direct core download. Megatron, as a disincentive to treachery by his powerful Phase-Sixers, demanded more than just a verbal report when they returned from their devastating missions. He would plug them into the nearest HD datalog upon each return. This, though, was different. This was alien. But at the same time it was far more intimate than the datalog download had ever been.

"Don't!" the six-changer cried out. He had no comprehension of what was happening, but he knew the light was pure; and he was not. He struggled against his bonds. "Don't!" he cried out. "You'll ruin it!"

The Voice shushed him._ You cannot alter or diminish us, child._

"I'm no child. I kill children." Sixshot squirmed and tried to shake his head. "Don't do this. You don't want to know...

The Voice laughed: a high, true tone. _I formed you from my very being, child. I have known you from the beginning._

Sixshot blenched. "I ruined it then," he whispered.

_Hush,_ the Voice ordered. Then deeper, darker; perilous yet somehow more familiar: _This one is one of mine._

"You don't need to claim me." Sixshot, the mighty, struggled to find words to stop this thing he did not understand. "I'm just Megatron's pet hand of destruction."

_You think I know nothing of destruction, child?_ More than mere sound, the words slapped through the very atoms of Sixshot's metallic frame, leaving him gasping and undone. His puny ability to lay waste to a planet was as nothing before the great thunder of the Voice.

"What are you?" Sixshot asked, afraid he knew, but still compelled to hear it for himself.

A finger-thin hose unwound from his body. But unlike all the others, this small pipe was open-ended. _We are One: Light and Darkness,_ said the Voice. Sixshot watched, transfixed, as one of the millions of tiny lights swam through it to the opening, emerged, and hovered trembling mere inches from his face._ We are life. And we are death. Partake, if you desire to know us as we know you, child._

"Will I die if I do it?" asked Sixshot.

The voice was gentle. _Yes, child. The knowledge we offer comes with death._

The bright, darting mote swam closer. It quivered against his lips. He felt it humming with strange power, tempting him.

"Will I be allowed to report back to Jetfire before I go offline?" Sixshot asked. "I owe him that much. He needs to know you're here."

_You will_, the Voice promised.

"All right," Sixshot said. It was not the death he'd have chosen, perhaps. But it did mean that his life might now be good for something. He opened his mouth.

The speck of light swam in.

Sixshot closed his mouth. His head was full of sound and fizz.

He swallowed.

He blinked. "Oh," he murmured, confused. And then again in wonder: "Oh."

* * *

_Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold to be refined._

_Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted from ore._

_Miners put an end to darkness, and search out to the farthest bound the ore in gloom and deep darkness._

_They open shafts in a valley away from human habitation;_

_they are forgotten by travelers, they sway suspended, remote from people._

_As for the earth, out of it comes bread; but underneath it is turned up as by fire._

_Its stones are the place of sapphires, and its dust contains gold..._

_But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?_

_Job 28:1-6, 12 (NRSV)_

o0o0o

The planet was completely unfamiliar. But this was no longer because everything they knew had been melted to slag. As Astrotrain flew low over the surface, he had to dodge under great spans of copper bridges, avoid mountains of molybdenum, and dart around soaring titanium towers that shimmered with muted colors in the dim starlight. Underneath they could see lakes of bright silver mercury and dune seas of rust. Once or twice they flew over chasms so deep that Astrotrain's disbelieving radar-ping yielded only a question-mark.

Optimus stared out through the triple-changer's windshield, for once struck dumb. Cybertron was transformed. The distant stars were mirrored in shimmering lines of dimly-glowing light that ran along the bridges, towers, planes, and ridges of this new-made world. The light was brighter, though, at the bottom of the pits that plunged toward the planet's core. They found Cosmos and Beachcomber staring down into one of these, mesmerized by all that far-away white light.

The little bots rose blearily when the Commanders landed, and dusted themselves off in an awkward attempt to show some military discipline. But all their words came in a daze, and they could offer little in the way of useful information. In the end, Prime commended their diligence, told Cosmos to transform, and sent the two minibots back to the fleet medbay for a checkup from Ratchet.

Megatron all but ignored their departure. He was staring down into the chasm which had so unnerved Cosmos.

Astrotrain watched his Leader with increasing apprehension. "You're not thinking-" the triple-changer cut his words off short, but not short enough.

"Can you think of a faster way to reach them?" Megatron challenged. "The original drill-bore is obliterated."

Astrotrain crossed his arms. "You lunatics can go for it. I'm not crazy. And I'm not a Commander. It's not my responsibility to go after lost strays."

Megatron grinned, the smile that had terrorized whole civilizations. "Oh, but that's where you're wrong, my dear Lieutenant. We have two Autobots with us. You will carry one of these flightless birds, and I the other."

"What?!" Astrotrain threw up his hands.

Optimus craned his neck to look into the pit, then glanced back at Elita. "He's got a point," he said. "We're not getting down there without help. Would you mind being carried for a bit?"

Elita pursed her lips. After all, Prime was heavy, and Megatron was the obvious choice to carry him. But Astrotrain was radiating fear and anger, and besides, she didn't know him. "Do you mind?" she asked the triple-changer, gesturing to Prime. "It's just that I'm more comfortable with Megatron. Ironic, I know," she added.

Astrotrain glared at Megatron, and swore. "Do I have any choice?" Still grumbling, he turned his back and hunched his shoulders. "Climb aboard, oh Worthy and most Glorious of Primes." He knew he looked ridiculous; for Prime, who was more than a full head taller than he was, had to stoop down for what was surely the most ridiculous piggy-back ride ever given. "Try not to choke off my oil and air lines," the triple-changer said, "Or they'll have to peel both of us up from the bottom of this thing." He turned to Megatron. "I'm holding you responsible if my thrusters can't take it." He jumped first into the pit, aiming, he supposed, to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible.

His thrusters lasted almost two-thirds of the way down. Then they sputtered, and he fell several fuel tank-lurching yards.

"Grab onto this," Megatron called, unleashing the energon flail he kept folded into his left arm.

Astrotrain grabbed hold of the proffered help, and bade farewell to the last rags of his pride.

* * *

_If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it._

_-Albert Einstein_

o0o0o

It was like being in a dream - a dream of neverending tunnels. Megatron followed Optimus with trust and confidence, never questioning why he still felt so confident in Prime's link to the core. Elita walked hand-in-hand with her Orion, her head turning every which way to take in all she was seeing. Astrotrain scuffed along behind, sullen and silent. He was stuck here with these loonies until his overtaxed thrusters cooled. He had not wanted to remain alone at the bottom of the chasm; but with every step he grew more certain that they were all going to their doom.

The four bots walked forward into darkness, but wherever they went, translucent pipelines all along the walls lit up with a white-glowing substance. Though it seemed crazy, Elita felt that the light was sentient - that it was watching them.

They picked their way down ever narrowing tunnels, until they had lost all track of time and direction. It was warm; it was quiet; it was, all things considered, rather pleasant. But they were hopelessly lost, and no nearer to finding the lost bots than they'd been when they had started.

A shadow, moving up ahead, did not draw their prompt attention as it perhaps should have done. This labyrinth was nothing but the swinging play of light and shadow, and the steady tread of eight feet clumping on the curving ground. Everything moved. So they'd stopped watching movement. It was Astrotrain, still tense, who called out the first alarm.

A figure detached itself from the darkness and strode out to meet them. Taller even than Prime and Megatron, it appeared not to notice as the four bots rapidly assumed defensive positions and readied their weapons. Astrotrain recognized the shape, and squeaked out a very naughty word. The figure approached to within easy speaking distance, and stopped. "I will take you to them," it said. "This way."

It was Sixshot.


	6. Stage 6: Children of Light

**Stage 6: Children of Light**

"And you say this is a good thing?" Megatron expostulated. He pointed up at the bundles of piping hanging from the ceiling. "Those are my mechs, Sixshot, not yours; and you would do well to remember that."

Optimus smiled to hear Megatron claiming Autobots and Decepticons equally. But he put a restraining hand on his bond-brother's arm. "Hear him out," he suggested. "We don't want to do them more harm by charging in without full information." He turned to Sixshot. "Speak quickly, however. Those are my mechs, too. And I will climb the walls to free them if I must."

Sixshot sat on the floor of the high cavern, no less at ease than if he had been settling down for an oil bath. As the strange light of that place flickered down like drops of water on his armor, he began at the beginning.

"Before time began, there was The One."

"Light and darkness, life and death, creation and destruction. We slagging know the story, Sixshot." Astrotrain paced, caught between his insane Commanders and the creepy wall.

"Conflict arose within him," the six-changer went on, unfazed. "One became Two: Primus the great Creator, and his opposite: a Destroyer who sought to unite all things in dissolution.

"Wasn't reunion the whole point of this Smelter-slagged scheme? Our Glorious Commanders found so much slagging ecstasy in their most-holy bond that they thought they ought to force the gods to try it too?" Astrotrain snorted. "Much good it did us."

"Yes," agreed Sixshot. "It has done us more good than we knew. It has set us free from our immortality. It has returned the gift of death, if we have courage to accept it."

"You know-" Astrotrain was livid now, his hands working in and out of fists. He was long past any lingering fear of the mighty Phase Sixer. "I somehow don't think Dirge would agree with this shiny new philosophy of yours. I saw him, Sixy: all splayed out on the overload table, with Starscream's damned 'Happy Juice' still pumping into his limp corpse. His was not a pretty death. It was not a good death. And nothing you can say will convince me that something like that is a gift."

With the deceptive speed of those who seldom feel the need to run, Megatron made his way to the side of his Lieutenant.

"Slag off, Great Leader," Astrotrain warned.

But Megatron stilled him with a firm hand on his shoulder. (Astrotrain's armor was quivering with tension.) "It's all right to be angry," he said. "I felt just as you do, at first." He gestured to Sixshot. "Continue."

The soft colors of the tall six-changer's plating caught and reflected the flickering light in the chamber, until he appeared almost intangible as he leant against the lambent, shifting walls. "Primus could grant life," he said. "But without the influence of Unicron, any life he created would go on living forever. Or as near to it as makes no difference. Not even several million years of civil war have managed to annihilate our species." Sixshot looked across the wide room to Astrotrain, and for the first time the transcendent peace that was so unexpected on his features drained away. "Can you honestly say that you've never felt your endless life to be a burden? Because if you can, Astrotrain, then I envy you."

The triple changer met Sixshot's gaze as bravely as he could. But slowly, the light in his optics dimmed. Eventually, he looked away. He shrugged free from Megatron, and slipped off into a corner.

Sixshot exhaled a long, tired sigh. He ran a finger along a pipeline in the floor beside him. "White energon," he explained to the three Commanders. "More refined than anything we've ever tasted. But these-" he pointed to the darting lights within the clear bright liquid, "These are the Gift of Primacron. To take them into your systems is to accept that one day, you will die. But it is also... much more..." Sixshot faltered. "I cannot describe it. But it was..." he paused, then looked up to meet Megatron's optics. "I am free now. I am-" his voice broke, "...forgiven."

Astrotrain gave a sudden yelp, and jumped back to his feet. The coiled bundles far above were moving. Optimus and Megatron raised their weapons. Elita stood taut, hands splayed and spark flared to sense the mood of the room itself.

Without any fuss or fanfare, the captives were lowered as gently as Ratchet would have laid a wounded bot upon a slab. Translucent pipelines uncoupled from the ten mechs' spark-cores; then with sentient precision, re-closed their armor. Some of the bots sat slumped upon the floor, some lay as if asleep, some swayed on stumbling feet; but gradually and with some false starts, all booted up to full power. They were dazed. They were dizzy. Perceptor, for once, was silent. But so far, these were the only side-effects from their direct core-interface with a living planet.

It was Sixshot who acted first. He stooped to look into the optics of each bot. Some quailed at the sudden nearness of a feared Decepticon; but Hound, Jetfire, and (to everyone's surprise) Mixmaster met his gaze with quiet directness. "What?" the Constructicon demanded of Megatron's raised eyebrow. "It was something I'd never tried before!" But there was no denying that the once-fey scientist had partaken of the Gift of the gods; for some - a very little - of his usual reckless love-affair with danger had been eased.

Jetfire made his unassuming way to Optimus. "I'd like to report a completed mission, Sir."

"Well done," said Prime. What more was there to say?

The taller white Autobot laid a hand on Prime's shoulder. "Sixshot and I will get the others to the fleet. We have been shown the way. But now it is your turn. Primacron wishes you to report. This is what I was requested to tell you."

Optimus blinked. But then he nodded.

Megatron stooped beside his blunted Lieutenant. "You've done your duty, Astrotrain. You may return to the fleet with the others, if you wish."

"Won't you need me to get your favorite dead-weight Autobots back to the Command ship?" Astrotrain tried for bite, but managed only a mumble.

Megatron exchanged a quick glance with Prime and Elita. "I don't think we're going back," he said. He straightened, and a great weight slipped from his shoulders. "I think our long exile is over."

Astrotrain gave his Commander a disbelieving glance. But he did not stop to wonder further. He did not turn back as he stepped into the opening of Sixshot's cargo-hold.

* * *

The ships were buzzing with excitement. A sense of anticipation absent since before the Cataclysm was threading its fiery fingers into the crusted sparks of even the most distrustful bots. They did not understand what had happened or why. Some were afraid. Some thought it must all be some new sick joke. But they had all seen the reformatting of their homeworld through the cloudy porthole glass; and they had heard the call - a message from Optimus Prime in a tone of confidence they had never thought to hear from him again: Come home.

"Of course," said Shockwave, as he waved his non-gun-hand for calm, "The Prime does not mean we should all simply plummet helter-skelter down to the surface. Plans must be made. Precautions taken. Weapons armed in case there is some... unforeseen development. But yes, we will go down. With caution."

Prowl agreed. While Shockwave deployed the Seeker Air Corps and the Arialbots to once again map out the new-made planet and to look for likely landing sites, Prowl sent Jazz, Mirage, and Bumblebee with teams of three to test out its surface and make sure the place was transformer-friendly. Each captain in the fleet was ordered to have his ship's cargo ordered and ready for deployment. All of Cybertron's refugees were sent to quarters and told make ready, which in Prowl's lexicon meant priming all guns for battle, just in case.

* * *

Optimus, the erstwhile Prime, took something out of his subspace and sat down on the undulating floor to look at it. It was a piece of charred metal: vaguely oval-shaped, with four holes at each end which fingers might thread through. Broken flanges in the center had once held something precious. Now it was empty. Optimus scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked up at the shining globe hanging so far above him, and he sighed.

"Need a lift?" Megatron had come silently up to his bond-brother, and stood there, looking down at him.

Optimus paused, then shook his head. "Thanks for the offer, old man," he said. "But I think I'll climb." He started off, then turned back and fell against the big Decepticon in a quick, desperate hug.

Megatron patted his back a couple times. "Good luck," he said lamely.

Optimus wrenched away, and moved to stand beside Elita. She was running her hand lightly over the luminescent wall. Light shone faintly green through the ducting material. It reflected oddly on her face. She smiled up at him then - a sad, strange smile. "It will be all right," she said.

He grabbed her up and pulled her close - as close as two life-bonded sparks. She wrapped her legs around his waist and held him tight. Their souls reached for one another; and for half a klik their frames hummed with an energy so strong it had defied time, war, distance, and disappointment. "It will be all right, Orion," she repeated. She disentangled herself from him. "Go."

Optimus Prime hooked one handle of the Matrix casing on his thumb, reached up to clasp the strongest-looking pipeline he could get a good grip on, and climbed hand-over-hand up, up, up, and out across the curving ceiling. He looked for all the world like a boarding space-pirate.

* * *

The white globe hung before him, neither beckoning nor hostile. It's just a really bright light, some heathen voice within him whispered. Or perhaps some strange chemical that caused hallucinations. Or a parasitic invader which fed off the sparks of Cybertronians. It was nothing; he should leave it. No one was so foolish as to plug an unknown substance into their own core! Their planet was restored to them; why should he risk self-inflicted pollution? (Why should he have to face the Source like some newling bot caught in disobedience?) He pushed that last thought aside. He was afraid.

His shoulder and wrist joints had not been constructed to bear up his entire weight. He told himself he'd hang here like an idiot until the first alarm from his internals. Then he'd retreat to the floor and have done with it.

A little to his left, two thick translucent lines looped down. Optimus supposed it was up to him whether they were predatory coils, or the world's most comfortable hammock. The servos in his shoulders whined. "All right," he said. He settled into the sling, one loop under his knees, one under his arms and back. "Here I am."

* * *

Cocooned in luminosity, plugged into a planet, Optimus braced himself to be stripped bare beneath the uncompromising bulb of a single great Eye. He was not looking forward to the rebuke he deserved for his recent fall into melancholia. Yet there was no hint of reproach or of praise. All his actions and reactions, failures and successes, all were all simply known and accepted - and in some cases, categorized in ways which surprised his archivist's sensibilities. His first triumph at Hydrax classed as prideful destruction? His retreat at Tarn an act of mercy? Confused and just a little scared, he surrendered to a power greater than himself, closed his mouth around the proffered tiny, living light, and waited for his headframe to explode.

But there was no explosion. Instead, a gentleness he'd never even felt within Elita's arms enfolded him, accepted him, and even - his intakes choked up in surprised emotion - honored him with unexpected (and in his opinion, undeserved) gratitude. Orion Pax, the Autobot who had become Optimus Prime, was washed clean in a baptism of fire and light and love. The deluge of uncorrupted programming coursed through him, loosing old viruses within his code, defragging the bits of resentment he still carried, realigning thought-patterns too crusted-up with age that he no longer noticed just how crooked they'd become.

_What do you want most, child?_

Optimus blinked. "Wait- what?" He felt stupid. He might as well have grunted like some half-grammed voiceless thug before the god-spark.

_Take your time in answering_, the voice encouraged. Warmth flowed into him through the connection in his chest.

"I want..." He scrolled through the endless litany of all his battles, all the bots he'd killed (he tried not to forget a single one, but there were so very many), all the times he'd destroyed something precious to prevent it from becoming Megatron's newest plaything...

He shook his head. He'd never wanted any of those things.

"I want..." Optimus wanted to be a mech who built things up instead of tearing them down; a mech who strengthened those around him, rather than running them through with an energon axe. He wanted (Primus, how he wanted!) to heal rather than to make new wounds. He wished the Matrix hadn't died, that he could spread its wisdom out across this new Cybertron and its inhabitants, could somehow heal all the oldest hurts and help the mechs he led emerge from the long darkness. In spite of everything he had done in the long war, he'd always loved these bots - blabbermouths, psychopaths, and all. He wished he could somehow transmute that love into something that made a difference in the real world.

_Granted,_ said the voice.

"What?" Optimus repeated. "I'm sorry - I don't understand."

_Receive your matrix,_ said the voice. And something terribly familiar was placed into the empty space inside his open chest.

Prime knew it as he knew the weight of his weapon, the cadence of his transformation, the rumble of his tires on smooth roadway. The broken casing he had brought up here was filled - and now he felt its new light coursing outward from his center to the very tips of his fingers, the spines of his helm, the soles of his boots. Some indescribable magnetic energy shot out from his body, out to all the lonely, scared, uncertain sparks of all the mechs and femmes whom Prime had long ago promised to love and lead. He felt as if he were stretched impossibly thin across the sky, a hundred-thousand toes and fingers touching every one of Cybertron's children. He saw and knew each one of them, and his spark swelled with the love he felt for them all.

And then the straining, gasping light snapped back into his spark.

And Optimus Prime knew who he was, and all he could do.

He stumbled, finding himself once again upon the floor, and met the steadying blue optics of his bondmate. She put out a hand to touch him.

And she smiled.

* * *

Not one to ever let Optimus Prime outshine him for more than a nanosecond, Megatron steeled himself and climbed up the wall, determined to beat his bond-brother's time. He was doing his best not to think about what might await him at the top. And he was not sure he would accept the Gift, if such it was, with the alacrity that Optimus had shown.

_What do you want, child of light and of darkness?_ asked the voice.

"You know, you've asked me that before," said Megatron. "Or is your memory not as omniscient as it once was?"

The great voice laughed. _You amuse us, small one._

Into his spark, there came an echo of words Megatron had said once, long ago: "I don't want to be a murderer anymore. I'll be a soldier. I'll be an enforcer. Slag, I'll even be an executioner. But I don't want to be a murderer ever again."

_We remember,_ said the voice. _But is this your only desire? The Megatron we know would never stop at wanting only one thing._

Something out of the ancient universe was laughing at him; Megatron was sure of it. "I want to be a good leader," he whispered in his silent heart. Then, lest he be thought cowardly, he shouted, "I want to be a good leader! You know, the kind of leader I would want to follow. I want..." his voice sank. "I want to be more like Optimus... on his good days..." He threw in that last aside in a vain attempt to recover some shreds of his dignity. But there was no possibility of anything but plain truth here, not with a light-filled conduit tapped into his spark-core.

_That is a good desire,_ said the voice.

"Slag off," said Megatron. "I know it is."

_Receive it then,_ said the voice gently. _Receive your matrix, Megatron_ (he could feel Primacron smiling in the faint pause):_ a 'matrix of leadership,' if you will._

Megatron held out his hands, trying to control his eagerness. Something was placed onto his palms.

It was a pretty little thing: silver, a delicate S-curve that tapered to points from a crystal enclosed at the center by a filigree of rare metal. Megatron thought at first that it might be some new kind of throwing weapon. But the weight of it, the feel of its texture, and above all the almost-unheard hum coming from the crystal inside was like the barest taste of all the things he'd ever tried to do and be but failed - a lifeline to the vision of himself on a lightening-lit cliff, standing over all of Cybertron and watching as it prospered under his wise guidance. Megatron wanted that matrix. But it was dark.

_It won't be fully functional until you are upgraded,_ the voice told him gently. As his fingers closed intently around the small silver artifact, something flickered in his other hand, and drew his attention.

A little globule of light that wriggled like a happy fish was nestled in the hollow of his palm. He stared at it.

Megatron knew what he was being offered. Life and death and all he'd ever wanted all-in-one.

"You slaggers," he whispered. But he opened his mouth, and popped the bright thing in.

New strength coursed through him, and new patience, too. And where he had always kept a sense of worthlessness hidden behind the barbed-wire of his spark, there flamed instead a feeling of great joy in all he had accomplished, and in all he could still do. The fingers of his empty hand curled to a fist - not of anger, but of determination. And although he could not see it, the gilt glints upon his crest shone with an inner fire.

The stone in the curved thing he'd been given flared to life.

* * *

After a eleven million years or so of living, not even a conversation with the gods could throw Optimus Prime or Megatron much off their stride. But core-deep reprogramming was still a big deal. Standing so closely together they were damaging their paint, they spoke over one another in hushed whispers:

"Did you get-?"

"Yes." Optimus touched his chest in awe. "And...you?"

Megatron held out the beautiful thing he'd been given.

Elita asked him with a glance; then loosed one hand from around Optimus's side, and reached out a cautious hand to touch it.

She gave a long, aching sigh. "My turn?"

"If you wish, dear one," replied Prime, pulling her close.

"Wait for me."

"As if we'd find anywhere else to go!" Optimus cupped a hand against her cheekplate. "Good luck, Ari. I love you."

"I know," she replied, with that particular half-smile that was her own and no one else's. Hand-over-hand, Elita climbed.

* * *

_Thank you for coming, daughter._

"Of course," said Elita.

_And we are glad you have accepted our gift._

Elita smiled a little. "It is a relief. I never wanted to live forever." Light had exploded through her systems when she'd taken the bright thing into her mouth. But it had cleared out all the dark and hidden corners in her spark, and Elita-One felt new, unbowed, unbroken.

_You have borne your trials with patience, even in the absence of so many of your sisters. We are sorry they were taken from you._

"They weren't all killed." Elita shrugged. "A great many of the early femmes left - some before I even knew their names. Some survived, I hope." She sighed, dropping the pretense. "But yes. It has been hard being one of the few femmes who came through the Great War. I feel like a creature in a zoo, the way the mechs look at me nowadays."

_Do you wish there were more like you?_

"Yes and no," Elita said. "I mean, the newlings are nice and all, but they are so unlike myself and my little band of survivors. They've never seen the War. They know nothing of life. They're more like children than like sisters. I wish..." She paused.

_Yes?_

"I just wish that I could have gotten to know Strika and the others better. Before they left us."

_You may yet have that chance, daughter._

Elita hesitated. "You mean, in the after-spark?"

The voice laughed. _Possibly much sooner. We shall see._

Elita was flabbergasted. Were they still alive? Might some of them return? And how-? She stifled her questions, and pondered possibilities in her spark.

"I will need-"

_Yes, daugher?_

Elita felt her way forward. "I will need an extra measure of wisdom in order to guide the femmes in this new world, er... Primacron."

Granted, the voice declared. And she could hear the smile in it. Elita held out her hands. A tiny golden key fell into them. And as it touched her palms, she felt its power flow like electricity down through her body, into the metal of this new planet, and up out into the distant stars. Elita-One was grounded.

* * *

A new world takes time getting used to. There were mountains where the Rust Sea had once been; a featureless plain where Iacon had stood; a vast silver lake of mercury split the Altihex province almost in two. Roadmaps were useless; none of the old highways still remained. But (thanks mostly to Ratchet) no one perished from missing an unexpected curve as they sped too-heedlessly along sparkling spans of virgin roadway lifted up out of the living planet. Slowly, bots grew used to finding New Kaon in the Helex Quadrant, and Pax Cybertronia on the plateau just the other side of the (new) Sonic Canyons. After a while, they grew tired of adding the prefix "New" to everything, and just built up cities and explored terrain without reference to the things of old. It felt good, some said, to slough off the crusted old life; though each bot tried to recreate in this new world their best memories from the old version. Macaddam's Old Oil House (not one bot suggested they rename it "New") was one of the first buildings constructed.

The heart of the planet was the Audience Chamber - where any bot who wished might come and commune with the Source that had formed them. Some came back changed in processor and core: receivers of the Gift of Primacron, they went about their lives with new intent, knowing their time was limited. Others returned without tasting the white fire; but all visitors to the Source were better for it. Freer.

New Kaon was home to the Great Forge, where bots of all factions could come together in the most solemn of creative efforts. In several quartex of hard, careful labors, they could construct the body of a newling Cybertronian.

This form the creators would then transport down through tunnel-shafts to the Creation Matrix: an orb of white light housed in a round room not unlike the Chamber of Vector Sigma, where newlings could receive a living spark, and where, sometimes, bots with no known creators had their strange genesis. (Perceptor and Double-A were steadfastly researching this phenomenon.)

The planet was breathing again, interacting with its citizens, and traveling with joy across the universe for the first time since its inception. Primacron was content, and there was peace.

For all those who were not yet ready to accept the Gift, Optimus Prime became something between high priest and father. It was in his power to listen with an unjudgemental heart, to see beneath the surface grime and clutter to the source of the old pain, the kink in the old programming, and to cleanse and straighten any bot's hunched soul. His love for his people could penetrate even the most hate-crusted spark. They'd always followed him because they held him in esteem. Now, the bots of New Cybertron followed their Prime in adoration.

Megatron still struggled to keep his temper in check, but it was noted by mechs in both factions that he seemed to have settled into his station beside the Prime like clay that finally fit in the mold. It was his vision and prudence that made possible the orderly building up of beautiful new cities, and established the first fair court system since the Golden Age. His word was law; but his word was also just and merciful. To the surprise of many, Megatron was learning to be kind.

Elita was waiting for something - her co-Commanders could both sense it. But she didn't say what it might be, and they did not press her. But as she looked up to the skies, more often than not Optimus was with her, smiling.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked her, late one night as they stood on a tower balcony that overlooked the sparkling lights and happy bustlings of New Kaon.

She scanned the shimmering white arm of a nearby galaxy that spooled across the sky. She pointed. "That way I think, dearest."

"All right then," he said.

He opened his comm-link. "Megatron, my old nemesis," he said. "I know you've been wanting to do this for a long, long time. We're all set topside. Throw the switch. Let's see where those engines can take us!"

At the bottom of a tunnel running to the planetary core, Megatron's mouth split into a wide, toothy grin. "Right then. Throwing the switch in 3... 2... 1..."

A subharmonic rumble coursed up through the metal soles of 75,000 Cybertronian feet. Gravity shifted slightly to the left. At the heart of the planet, Megatron's shout of triumph was lost in a shuddering burst of primal power as the pistons of Primacron's great engines gave a first joyous chug-chug-CHUG! then settled into a contented pumping. Outside, as Elita and Prime watched, the stars in the night sky began to wheel ever so slowly round.

Prime's voice was giddy; not unlike the young Orion Pax on his first trip to the Archives. "Well done, old man!" he called, as the sky slid into a blur of motion. He kept the comm-line open, waiting for his bond-brother's reply. But all he heard was Megatron's exultant roar of laughter. The sky thundered in a burst of Wheeljack's best fireworks, and every single flying mech took to the skies in loop-de-loops of triumph. The cheer rising up from the streets was deafening.

"We're off, my love," Optimus whispered. And Elita met his gaze and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

Thanks to everyone's who's read this. The tale is finished as such, but I'm leaving it as it is: flawed, repetitive in theme, and structurally-unsound, because I need to take what I have learned from this experience and move on. This story exists to lay the groundwork for the future. I needed to establish some of how New Cybertron works. But yeah - slogged and slogged through this, and I'm ready to be done.

Stay tuned for RainbowSparkle and the Courtship of Megatron, into which I look forward to pouring all the reams of knowledge I have gleaned from the stacks of "How to Write More Gooder" books that I've been sucking up like cocaine lately. (Not that I have any idea what sucking up cocaine is like, thankfully.)

I HAS PLANNZZZ!

Till then,

-Prime out.


End file.
